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OUTRE-IWER 



OUTRE-MER 



IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA 



BY 



PAUL BOURGET 

MEMBER OF THE FRENCH ACADEMY 







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NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
1895 



1^1 K?U . p / / 



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COPYRIGHT 1894, 1895 
BY JAMES GORDON BENNETT 



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CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. At Sea i 

II. The First Week i8 

III. Society 43 

A Summer City 43 

IV. Society 71 

Women and Young Girls 71 

V. Business Men and Business Scenes no 

VI. The Lower Orders 159 

The Workingmen 159 

Farmers and Cowboys • 228 

VII. Education 276 

VIII. American Pleasures 326 

IX. Down South 371 

In Georgia 371 

X. Down South 402 

In Florida 402 

XI. Homeward 414 



OUTRE-MER 



AT SEA 

On Board the , August, 1893. 

The enormous ship — it has three funnels, a displacement 
of ten thousand tons, and an average speed of five hundred 
miles a day — is ploughing the broad ocean under full head- 
way. An August afternoon sky broods over the Atlantic with 
its autumn clouds. It is like a flat gray lid, beneath which, 
tirelessly, monotonously, the waters heave and swell. The 
dull gray waves, opaque as the sky, rise up, tower aloft, and 
then come crashing down. For a second, as each uprears 
hself, the thin rufifled crest shines green, a fringe of foam 
plays along it, white and undulating. Then the wavering 
crest gives way, the emerald wall crashes down in a heavy 
mass of brackish water under the swelling of another wave. 
I'here are thousands upon thousands of them, heaving, rag- 
ing, clashing in a frenzy as of a resounding battle; over it 
sometimes a bird flies with outspread wings, black against the 
gray sky, seeking its prey in the wind and tempest. The 
mighty ship ploughs through the terrific heaving of the sea, 
without either pitching or rolling. So steady is the deck that 
it would seem like a weird nightmare but for the ceaseless 
quivering of its metal frame. 

This is one of the five or six steamers that sailors call " ocean 

B I 



2 OUTRE-MER 

greyhounds." It deserves the felicitous epithet as much by its 
proportions and the elegance of the lines which define the 
slender contour of its colossal hull as by its prodigious speed. 
Only a few hours ago, we started, and already the coast of 
Ireland is fading away, losing itself in the leaden rim of the 
cloudy dome which encircles the horizon. A few more turns 
of the double screw, and for a whole week we shall have 
around us only the unfathomable waves, and beyond them the 
New World. 

How it draws me — that New World, and for reasons no 
doubt far enough removed from those which are attracting my 
fellow-travellers. The flag that floats above us bears upon its 
white field the spread eagle of the United States. The ship 
is American, and so are most of my fellow-travellers. Hav- 
ing decided once again to quit France, I preferred to cut the 
thread at once, and here I am already in Yankee land. I hear 
only English on this deck, — a nasal English in which the word 
"well " takes the place of the word "yes," and recurs continu- 
ally. It has already behooved me to change my French money 
and to learn without delay that the unit of expenditure has 
leaped from the franc to the dollar; in other words, is quin- 
tupled. These are the first two evidences of expatriation, 
and the next is the indescribable insolence of the ship's ser- 
vants, or rather of the help. For have I not long known that 
there are no servants in the United States? Not one of my 
neighbors, who to the number of a hundred or so are enjoying 
the air on long folding-chairs, has probably observed these 
trifles; but for the foreigner they are like the little shiver 
that thrills through the swimmer as he makes the first plunge. 
However accustomed one may be to what the tragical and 
restless Maupassant used to call "the errant life," there is in 
the sudden leap from any "home " a vague sensation of melan- 
choly. Or rather — for that is a pretty large word for a 
simple contraction of the nerves — it is rather an involuntary 



AT SEA 3 

impulse to draw back. The thousand inconveniences of the 
uprooting rise up before you, and you ask yourself, " Why this 
new journey? What am I crossing the ocean to seek, far from 
my friends, my books, the familiar scenes of the land where I 
grew up? " Alas! it is no longer that land that is fading away 
yonder into the mist, for the name of this coast is Cape Clear 
Island. Never mind, that Irish island belonged to Europe, 
after all. That lighthouse which has just been kindled is no 
doubt heralding the arrival home to other travellers, who for 
one reason or another have already gone through the experi- 
ence upon which I am entering. When, eight or ten months 
hence, if God wills, I see again that point of land, that light 
flashing out against the sky, shall I have brought back from 
beyond the sea a rich harvest of ideas and memories? Shall 
I be telling myself then that I was wrong in again exiling 
myself for so long a time, or shall I say that I was right? 

To the two questions of afterwards I cannot yet make 
answer, but I see clearly my reply to the two former, the 
questions of beforehand. What America has to give me I do 
not know. What I expect from her I know very well, and 
I should like to sketch in a few lines upon the opening 
pages of my journal a sort of programme, an intellectual self- 
examination. 

When I come to revise my notes, it will make the best of 
prefaces for them, I think; and it is also the best way of 
beguiling the weariness of the steamer, that sensation of days 
at once long and empty, which from the experience of eastern 
sea-faring I know only too well. There is no such thing as 
time at sea, — no distribution of hours, no small divisions of 
life. One is as if cradled, rocked by a mighty power which 
suppresses you, in which you will melt away. The infinitely 
littles of sea-faring life, vague dreams of things seen only in 
their large outlines, are all that come to help you to while 
away these mornings and afternoons of languid vegetation. I 



4 OUTRE-MER 

shall try two remedies, and I begin with the second, which 
accords only too well with the dominant passion of my mind, 
with my fancy — my mania, almost — for gathering thousands 
of scattered facts into the brief limits of a formula. Well, the 
wolf will always show himself wolf, saith the sage. That is 
just a way of thinking, of looking at things, and it must have 
its uses as well as its limitations. In any case, it is my own 
particular kind of impressionism, and I can be sincere only 
by yielding to it, begging, in advance, the reader's pardon 
for this abuse of abstract reflection. 

"Expatriation," I wrote just now. How harsh the word is, 
and how false it rings! In all my journeyings I have felt, 
and I feel still more strongly now, that one can never be ex- 
patriated. However far he may be from his native land or 
from any land, he has only to retire into his innermost con- 
sciousness to find himself citizen not of the world, but of that 
little corner of it from which he came. What draws me to 
America is not America, but Europe and France; it is the 
disquietude of the problems in which the future of Europe 
and France is hidden. Three powers are at work to-day to 
hew out that future; three divinities, with hands as stern and 
inexorable as those of the Parcae, whose sovereignty over all 
the interests and enterprises of the Old W^orld it behooves us 
to recognize. The first is Democracy; the second is Science; 
the third, the last to appear and the least easy to name, is the 
idea of Race. Turn to whatever remotest corner of the con- 
tinent you may, from St. Petersburg to London, from Rome 
to Paris, you shall find these three powers at work, busy 
in moulding the lineaments of a new world, — so at least their 
devotees assert, — busy in destroying, piece by piece, the 
antique edifice which for ages has sheltered human life, and, 
say their adversaries, without building up anything to replace 
it. And the latter have no difficulty in showing us what sort 



AT SEA 5 

of a Europe these new divinities have made, how sinister it 
is, how different from that of which our fathers dreamed, 
when, at the close of the last century, they hailed with a shout 
of confiding hope the dawn of the Revolution. Universal 
suffrage, — that is to say, the imbecile tyranny of numbers, the 
reign of force in its blindest and most unjust form, — this is 
the regime which Democracy has established wherever it has 
triumphed. To this it has added the clamorous awakening 
of the lower appetites, a universal discontent with one's lot, 
and the constant menace of a revolt of the fourth estate, of 
poverty and envy, against a civilization which promised to 
give liberty, equality, and fraternity, and which has gone 
bankrupt of all its unrealizable promises. 

The positive benefit bestowed by Science is a more adroit 
treatment of nature, known at last with precision ; but it is 
dearly bought, if it be true that philosophical nihilism is the 
last outcome of this gigantic attempt to ask questions that 
have no possible solution. Brought face to face with the 
Unknowable, and constrained to acknowledge that its method 
is powerless ever to reach the causes that lie back of phenom- 
ena and the substance that lies behind accidental circum- 
stance, what aliment can Science give the soul, except the 
bread of bitterness and the waters of death ? Developing to 
the highest degree in the man of to-day the spirit of experi- 
ment and of criticism, it has made faith in the supernatural 
almost impossible to an innumerable multitude of average 
consciences, and it is the sum of the average consciences that 
makes what we call the national conscience. Hence, what a 
loss of the Ideal in contemporary Europe ! What uncertainty 
of conviction, and, as a natural consequence, what incoherent 
feebleness of will, what weakening of character, what ill- 
regulated energy, what moral maladies, forever recurring in 
ever-new complications, in these last years of this end of a 
century, which has so longed to do well ! 



6 OUTRE-MER 

And, finally, the idea of Race, which amid the gun-flashes 
of Solferino seemed so generous, so logical, — into what a 
menace of barbarism it has resolved itself, now that the very- 
Europe which gave herself to progress is only a succession 
of fortified camps, where thousands of men wait beside their 
loaded cannon for the hour of such an extermination as his- 
tory has never yet known I 

Yes, this is the evident task of these three direful and 
merciless toilers, whom it is nevertheless vain to ban. For in 
the grand, irresistible forces of society, as in those of nature, 
there is a character of fatality which is just so far sacred. 
Lying beyond the foresight and control of man, they appear 
to us as mysterious emanations of the very principle from 
which all reality flows. All that is irresistible and illimitable 
in them commands our acquiescence, as birth and death com- 
mand it, as day and night, or as this sea, whose waves beat 
upon this vessel on which I write these lines. In presence 
of such a necessity despair is impossible, until one has cal- 
culated all the chances of a happier future; that is to say, 
until one has made certain that the effects produced by these 
implacable causes are always the same. 

Now one country has been found where these three forces, 
so destructive in our old world, have been called upon to con- 
struct, out of whole cloth, a new universe. This country was 
a democracy from the very beginning, and a scientific democ- 
racy, because to conquer this virgin soil it was necessary to 
make use of the most modern machines and methods of indus- 
try. It was a country upon which the race problem was forced 
at its very origin, and against which it still continually brings 
up, being formed of the alluvium of all the nations of Europe, 
Asia, and Africa, and forced to make it possible not only for 
Englishmen to live with Irishmen, and Germans with French- 
men, but yellow and black men with men of white skins. 

Up to the present time it appears to have succeeded. Every 



AT SEA 7 

year its population augments, its riches increase, its cities 
grow, with the energy of tropical plants. Forty years ago, 
what was St, Louis, or St. Paul, or Minneapolis? what was 
Chicago itself? To-day, the inhabitants of those cities of 
yesterday are counted by the hundred thousand, two hundred 
thousand, five hundred thousand; and this year the most 
surprising one of them all has opened an Exposition to which 
the whole world was invited — and the whole world has gone 1 
An army of twenty-five thousand men suffices this people, who 
yet, less than thirty years ago, proved that military energy was 
as abundant among them as all other forms of energy; and 
then, the struggle ended, they returned to the occupations of 
peace with the same rapidity with which they had organized 
the formidable machinery of war. How can one know of the 
existence of such a nation, and not be curious to study the 
conditions of its existence elsewhere than in books? How 
lose an opportunity to estimate upon the spot the worth of 
this society, which claims to be that of the future, and which, 
in any case, is one of the possibilities of the future? I be- 
lieve that I am aware in advance of all that will shock me in 
this country, where the poetry of a past is wanting, — I who 
have so loved Italy, Greece, Syria, and their soil, half formed 
of the dust of the dead. I know that I shall not find among 
them those of my own mind and heart. But where would I 
not go, or to whom, in the hope of getting back a little faith 
in the future of civilization, which, among us, seems upon 
the point of sinking into irreparable ruin? 

I have let five days pass since the afternoon of our depart- 
ure, when I tried my powers at that sort of mental balance 
sheet, which it is good to draw up in the first and last hours 
of a long journey. During the journey itself, one must give 
oneself up to the present sensation. The writer must make 
use of his general impressions, in the way that the painter 



8 OUTRE-MER 

utilizes the walls of his studio. He hangs upon them the 
studies which at once hide and are sustained by them. Dur- 
ing these five days, therefore, I have done my best to forget 
my theories, as I hope to forget them during the months to 
come; and I have given myself up to steamer life, which is 
always the same in all climates and on all seas. Neverthe- 
less, looking at it more closely, this ship is already a bit of 
America, and one who is keen-sighted in manners could 
easily distinguish here, as elsewhere, the national tone, that 
ineffaceable little sign which every people imprints upon its 
own physiognomy. Who has ever quitted a steamer of the 
Peninsular Company, the classic P. and O. of Egypt and 
India, for a vessel of the Messageries, without feeling that all 
England is in the one and all France in the other, just as all 
Italy is in the between-decks of one of the Florios, which 
coast from Genoa to Patrasso ? But one discerns these shades 
of difference only when one already knows the peoples. 

Here, at all events, is a sketch of some of the pictures 
which I shall carry away with me from this voyage, now so 
soon to end. We have made such good time that, having left 
Southampton on Saturday afternoon, we shall be in New York 
to-morrow — Friday — evening, notwithstanding that the sea 
has rudely assailed us at certain times, notably at that middle 
point of ocean which sailors call the "devil's hole," and 
although, at the very moment when I resume my journal, the 
fog is thickening over a sea so smooth that it barely shows a 
ripple. A ground swell lifts it in a large, slow undulation, 
while the ship is veiled in a soft, white mist, so dense that 
from one end of it persons and things at the other seem to 
melt together in a vague, spectral shimmer. Moment by 
moment the whistle rends the fog with its strident call, but 
the speed of our course is not lessened by a single knot. 

"It is safer," says one of my table companions. "In case 
of collision, the swiftest vessel always cuts down the other." 



AT SEA 9 

And first this upper deck, on which I have passed so many 
hours, while the waves, beaten by the wind, sprinkled it with 
their salty spray; let me once more bring before my eyes the 
two passages along the cabins, with their lines of close- 
crowded steamer chairs. There men and women passed their 
days, reading, conversing, lounging, sleeping; the colors of 
their plaids, the intermingling of green and yellow, red and 
black, bringing out the brightness or the blemishes of their 
faces. To my fancy, these faces, young and old, which every 
morning I found in the same place, were like enigmas of 
race, in which, with a singular curiosity, I amused myself 
with searching the not-to-be-attested heredities, all the various 
elements which have been fused together in that Corinthian 
brass, the American race. In all this crowd there was nothing 
of the clean-cut outline which distinguishes the physiognomy 
of almost all Englishmen, clear, heavy, distinct, like their 
printing. Instead of this were countenances so dissimilar, 
and physiques so contradictory, that one could easily detect 
in them all the different atavisms of which the United States 
is the synthesis. This square-shouldered personage, with 
hands heavy as beetles and feet like the base of a column, 
who smokes great cigars with a strong inspiration of the 
breath, and whose small eyes flash through their spectacles 
with an expression at once shrewd and kindly, do I need to 
be told that his name ends in viann, and that he is returning 
to Chicago, before I can be sure that he is German, or a son 
of Germany? This other, with the nervous gayety of his deep 
blue eyes, his red beard, his excited gestures, the evident 
ail-but of his dress, how can I doubt that he is Irish, or a 
son of Ireland? This third, with his too black eyes, set in a 
spare, thin, olive-tinted mask, how indisputably Spanish, the 
living silhouette of some Californian adventurer ! 

And then, beside these faces, with their clearly defined 
character, there are others in which five or six different types 



10 OUTRE-MER 

have blended, — faces heavy and colorless, deeply marked 
with lines that tell of struggle. They smile, and in the very 
act of smiling they remain austere, almost bitter, as if the 
labors and pains of more than one generation had left their 
impress upon them. Many of the women, and very pretty 
ones, talk familiarly with both classes. Among them are 
several actresses, returning to their native country after a tour 
in England. I picture to myself the gallantries, actual or 
prospective, which such travelling intimacies would imply on 
a boat belonging to a Latin country. In the present case, the 
contrary impression prevails; here are crude manners on a 
basis of energy and determination, as ours are based on pleas- 
ure or wit. It is all symbolized in the courage, hardihood, 
persistence with which, ever since setting sail, and whatever 
the mutations of the sea, many of the young women have per- 
sisted in pacing the deck with steady steps; while a group of 
young fellows and older men played cricket on the forward 
deck, in driving spray or drenching rain. 

"My brother is not comfortable if he has not two hours of 
hard exercise every day," a young girl said to me, looking up 
from her diligent reading of a review article on Physical Cul- 
ture. 

The dining-room, also, rises up before my eyes, with the 
barbaric luxury of its new gilding and the humming of voices 
around the tables. From the hour of our departure the abun- 
dance of food has kept pace with the barbaric luxury, with its 
twenty-five dishes for breakfast, luncheon, or dinner. I had 
often heard of American wastefulness. I became aware of 
it three times a day, in face of this prodigality of food, which 
conjured up visions of oxen, sheep, and pigs hanging up by 
the score in refrigerating rooms between decks, heaps of fish 
in other ice-boxes, and a provision of milk products and fruits 
enough to last through a siege. 



AT SEA 1] 

The distance between me and the land of the vine was evi- 
dent enough merely from seeing how those who devoured 
these things washed down their food. Whiskey, ale, soda, 
tea, lemonade, port, sherry, dry champagne, brandy, apollina- 
ris, appeared on all the tables, attesting that voluntary habit 
of diet so characteristic of Anglo-Saxon countries. There is 
no type of food with them, as there is with us. Each stomach 
obeys its own caprice. And in the semi-hallucination caused 
by the rocking of the sea, I always seemed to see hovering 
over this assembly the smile of a certain singular personage, 
a New York dentist who lives in Rome, but whom I met again 
on this ship, on his way to a congress in Chicago, — one of 
those indefatigable artists in gold who, with all the daring 
and dexterity of an engineer, dig tunnels in the teeth of their 
clients, and build metal bridges in the most devastated 
mouths. At times he seemed to my eyes to be clothed in 
the dignity of host at this travelling table, so plainly, from 
the very first breakfast, did the boon companions show that 
animal avidity which characterizes a predatory race, to whom 
the preservation of a great masticating implement has of 
necessity become as important as talons to the vulture or 
claws to the lion. 

I see that dining-room again, quiet, decorous, solemnly 
resonant with the voice of a minister reading prayers. It is 
Sunday morning, and of two hundred passengers more than 
one hundred are present at this service ! These very faces 
which I saw yesterday, and shall see to-morrow, flushed with 
much eating, are bent over- Bibles, with the seriousness of 
sincere personal conviction. All these people travel with 
their own prayer books. I watched them through the sky- 
light, with the feeling that, in spite of the prodigious afflux 
of immigration, the soul of those Pilgrim Fathers who set sail 
in the Mayflower in 1620 is not yet dead, and I pictured to 



12 OUTRE-MER 

myself that setting forth, preceded by a day of solemn humili- 
ation, " the pastor having taken for his text this verse from 
Ezra : ' Beside the river Ahava I proclaimed a day that we might 
humble ourselves before our God and receive of him direction 
in the right way, we, our children, and all our substance.' " 

This is the profound feeling that still stirs in the " revivals " 
of America, with their emotion so intense that, even in this 
nineteenth century, new sects are forever springing up. You 
could feel the throbbing of it between the gilded walls of this 
gaudy saloon, with which in my mind it will ever be associ- 
ated. I shall always see there yet another and very different 
scene — a concert arranged by a theatre manager who is 
making a starring tour as far as San Francisco. The pro- 
ceeds of the concert were to be given to the hospital for 
poor sailors. A former minister of the United States to one 
of the first courts of Europe had accepted the presidency of 
the affair. All the humor of a nation of debaters, of men 
accustomed to be always talking, in private and public, spoke 
in the tone with which he began, alluding to his unhappy 
cabin experiences: ^'^ I present to you a very poor sailor.''^ If 
I had not known to what part of the world I was going, I 
should have learned from the absolutely simple manner of the 
umquhile diplomatist. It was enough to make amends for 
a sentimental ditty that will long ring in my ears, which 
began, "Two lambs in the field, not dreaming of mint sauce," 
and the painful vulgarity of a singer who mimicked an Irish 
chambermaid about to become an actress. Shaking her fist 
with the vigor of a professional boxer making ready to give a 
"punishment," she howled, "I 'want to be a Hactress! a 
Hactress ! " in such formidable tones that the glasses trembled 
at them as they had not done at the raging of the sea. 

What a course of international psychology was that lower 
smoking-room, about nine o'clock in the evening, especially 



AT SEA 13 

yesterday, when they drew the numbers of one of the last 
pools, on the speed of the ship. Fifty people, perhaps, in 
an atmosphere redolent at once of the steamer, of tobacco, 
of toilet water — for the barber's shop is next door, and he 
was occupied, with the door open, in shampooing a client's 
hair — and of alcohol ! There is a bar at the end of the 
room, where the alchemist to whom is intrusted the cocktails 
manipulates one of those corrosive mixtures with which Amer- 
icans delight to burn themselves up. Poker-playing goes on 
all night long in this room, with its lining of yellow wood and 
its electric lights, shaded by globes of blue and rose color, 
that shed a fairy-like radiance. The players are reading the 
points on the corners of their huge playing-cards; their im- 
passive faces, schooled for a bluff, betraying only that cold 
fever of the gambler, which now rages around the numbers of 
the pool. A cadaverous, thick-lipped actor has put them all 
In a bag, and is drawing them out and allotting them to the 
different passengers who in the course of the day have in- 
scribed their names on the sheet of paper hung up against the 
smoke-dimmed mirror. Next, they will be put "up at auction, 
and the fat man will run up the bidding, descanting on the 
merits of number with the glibness of a commercial traveller, 
though with sinister prediction. Thus he will say, "481, 
. . . there will be a terrible fog; 480, that is the lowest, and 
the best. We shall slip along like the Victory. 480, who 
wants enough to pay his insurance? 504, that is the highest 
and the best. This is all halcyon weather. We shall make 
506." And the bids go up, one dollar, five, ten, twenty, a 
hundred, until — "One, two, three, gone/" to the Honorable 

Mr. . 

The faces of these stick most in my memory, with their 
hard, restless eyes, and the firm, half-cruel movement of their 
mouths. Almost all of them are gray rather than brown- 
haired, their complexion poisoned by the abuse of the for- 



14 OUTRE-MER 

midable alcoholic drinks. Their faces inevitably bring up 
before me those western legends where a cocked revolver is 
always within reach of the player. Two faces, especially, 
appear clearly before me : one, square cut and open, with a 
sailor-cap drawn down over the brows, a short, straight pipe 
in the corner of the mouth, and a mocking smile as he raised 
the bid; the other, sharp and insolent, with an expression at 
once sly and vulgar. The voices which issued from these two 
mouths, as each grew more intense in this strife for dollars, 
betrayed a hatred almost like that of two different species, as 
if there were, in the background of this play, or more prop- 
erly this deed, the display of a force almost animal. And no 
sooner was the strife over the number of miles brought to an 
end, than it began again over the number of the first pilot 
we should meet. 

That first pilot boat, how tiny it was as it came flying be- 
fore the wind to meet us, with all sails spread, the waves at 
times threatening to engulf it ! We were six hundred miles 
from port, and it was a matter of three hundred dollars for 
the pilot. That evening we met another, who had made his 
five hundred miles for nothing, in the fearful wind of these 
last few days. For one second the steam is shut off. A tiny 
bark puts out from the schooner, bearing a rower with the pilot. 
The latter catches the rope ladder thrown to him from the 
deck. He has not overleaped the bulwarks before the machin- 
ery is at work again, and the steamer once more at full speed. 
Five minutes more, and the brave little sail-boat is only a 
white speck in the vast expanse, continually engulfed in the 
enormous hollows of the waves through which we cut, with 
the uniform speed of men who are determined to " break the 
record." That is the untranslatable expression by which 
Americans so well express that which, from the very first, has 
been the foundation of their character; to hold it possible to 



AT SEA 15 

do anything which has once been done, and to exceed it. Is 
this pride? Is it the madness of battle? Is it yet another 
instance of atavism — since these men are sons or grandsons, 
within three or four generations, of desperate men, who 
crossed this same ocean with the fixed idea that this was their 
last resort. I do not know; but I do know that I shall not 
soon forget the frantic speed of the ocean greyhound, during 
that last day of heavy fog, nor that first approach to the land 
of all audacity in the audacity of a speed great enough to cut 
through an ironclad, if we had happened to meet one. But 
who except myself thinks of such a thing? Every one is 
already absorbed in the newspapers which the pilot has just 
brought. "It is hardly worth while, though," says some one; 
"they are two days old." 

The seventh day we arrive in sight of New York, on a sum- 
mer morning at once burning and overcast. We could not 
come up to the wharf yesterday, because of the lateness of the 
hour, and I am glad of it, in view of the incomparable beauty 
of the approach. The steamer is passing up the mouth of the 
Hudson, which forms the harbor of this great city, with a 
motion as measured as twenty-four hours ago it was rapid. 
This sensation, so unexpected and profound, would alone 
repay the whole voyage. The enormous estuary frets and 
plashes, upheaved by the last surges of the Atlantic ; and on 
either shore as far as the eye can reach, — on the right, where 
New York stretches away, on the left, where Jersey City 
huddles, — is a long succession, indefinite, indeterminate, of 
short wooden wharves, broad and covered over. There are 
names inscribed upon them, here a railway company, there a 
steamship line, then another railway, and then another steamer 
company; and so on indefinitely, while from one wharf after 
another gigantic steamboats come and go, carrying away or 
pouring forth passengers by the hundred, scores of carriages, 
vast trains of loaded trucks. I count five, six, of these ferry- 



16 OUTRE-MER 

boats, — fifteen, twenty. Enormous, their two tiers of white 
and brown cabins overhang the green water, their iron 
wheels churn the heavy waves, and over all a gigantic 
walking-beam beats off their rhythmic motion. They meet, 
touch lightly, and pass one another by without a shock, so 
sure is their motion. They seem like colossal beasts of labor, 
each performing its task with sure fidelity. Numberless little 
vessels, stout and nimble, dart across their course. They are 
the tugs. The swells break rudely on their small hulls, and 
you hear the harsh puffing of their engines, those robust and 
almost over-large lungs of steel, which quite fill their little 
bodies. You realize how strong they are by their forward 
motion, so accurately directed that without ever slowing down 
they dart between heavy vessels, the impact of which would 
be shipwreck. Trailing in their wake are the most fragile 
kind of barks, carrying two, three, four masts. The slight 
little craft, trembling, almost disappears in the sea-green 
track cut deep in the laboring water, lashed into combing 
waves. Now and again one of these tugs sends forth a pierc- 
ing and piteous whistle, which mingles with the hoarse bellow 
of the ferry-boats. They are all threading their way on the 
breast of this vast river, among half a hundred great, slow- 
moving steamers like our own, — vessels from Europe, from 
South America, from North America. With tranquil strength 
the high red hulls cut the heaving mass, freighted with so 
much of human toil, so many human lives. Their forms are 
blurred in the warm haze, their outlines melt away, phantom- 
like. Behind them other steamers come into sight, barely 
outlined, dimly seen; and still farther in the background 
looms up a mighty forest of masts and yards, while high over 
all this gigantic moving mechanism, which might well be 
the mart of the entire world, towers the statue of Liberty, tall 
as a lighthouse, outlined against the foaming clouds. On the 
right and on the left the two cities stretch away, like the 



AT SEA 17 

perspective of a dream, far as the eye can reach — beyond 
the reach of thought. 

Leaning over the ship's rail on the side toward New York, 
I succeed in distinguishing a mass of diminutive houses, an 
ocean of low buildings, from the midst of which uprise, like 
cliff-bound islets, brick buildings, so daringly colossal that, 
even at this distance, their height overpowers my vision. I 
count the stories above the level of the roofs; one has ten, 
another twelve. Another, not yet finished, has a vast iron 
framework, outlining upon the sky the plan of six more stories 
above the eight already built. Gigantic, colossal, enormous, 
daring, there are no words, — words are inadequate to this 
apparition, this landscape, in which the vast outlet of the 
river serves as a frame for the display of still vaster human 
energy. Reaching such a pitch of collective effort, this 
energy has become an element of nature itself. To deepen 
this impression, history adds the ferocious truth of figures. 
In 1624, not much more than two hundred and fifty years ago, 
the Indians were selling to a Westphalian the extreme tip of 
Manhattan Island. He founded this city which lies here 
before me. It is the poetry of Democracy, and these sprout- 
ings forth of popular vitality are a poem, where the individ- 
ual is lost sight of, and personal effort is only a note in an 
immense concert. Verily, this is not the Parthenon, — that 
little temple on a little hill, in which the Hellenes summed 
up their Ideal, with hardly anything of the material, and of 
the Spirit enough to animate it with measure and harmony 
down to its smallest atoms. But it is the obscure and tre- 
mendous poetry of the modern world, and it gives you a tragic 
shudder, there is in it so much of mad and wilful humanity 
in a horizon like that of this morning — and it is the same 
every day ! 



II 

THE FIRST WEEK 

I HAVE passed a week in New York and have hardly seen 
one of the persons to whom I have brought introductions. 
During the burning heats of an August as stifling as that of 
Madrid, they are all in the country, at the seashore, in Europe. 
I myself am about to set out for Newport, the Deauville of 
America, that I may see society at close range. I have there- 
fore had leisure during these seven days, to ramble about the 
city as a mere tourist, and to receive a first impression of 
it — a first shock, as the agreeable Professor Charles N. 
of Cambridge said to me, advising me to name this book 
of travels American Shocks, by way of contrast to my Italian 
Sensations. 

I wish I might put down here the journal of this week ; not 
that I overestimate the importance and interest of these quite 
superficial hotel and street experiences. They warrant no 
general conclusion, and yet they have their value. It is, so to 
speak, a rushing sense of the foreign, which a longer sojourn 
will tone down, will do away with, to make room for a more 
quiet, perhaps more exact, observation. These almost instinc- 
tive perceptions of the difference of atmosphere between the 
country we are in and that from which we come, no longer 
deceive us when they have once been interpreted. I already 
foresee that certain very general theories are nearing the limit 
of their existence. It is probable that these hypotheses are very 
inadequate, and that I shall change them more than once before 
leaving this continent. Let me at least fix the surprises of 

i8 



THE FIRST WEEK 19 

these first hours before they are quite effaced — if it were only 
by way of memorandum. 

Saturday. — Henry J. said to me when we parted in London, 
" I am looking forward to your impression of the wooden docks 
of New York. You will want to return by the next steamer, as 
C did." 

The latter is a young Frenchman of rare mental superiority, 
who like myself determined to visit the New World for a course 
of treatment of activity and democracy. He landed upon a 
wooden wharf, as I did, found his way to some hotel, as I have 
done, presented his letters of introduction, as I shall present 
mine. Five days later he boarded a vessel about to sail for 
Europe. " I could not endure the blow," was his only reply to 
the surprise of his relatives. 

In truth, the blow of the landing is severe, at least to a 
Frenchman accustomed to that administrative order whose 
delays he curses when he is subjected to them, whose conven- 
iences he sighs for in this crush of the Anglo-Saxon crowd, 
where the struggle for life has its humble and vexatious symbol 
in the struggle for baggage. 

No sooner is the steamer docked than you find yourself in 
an immense shed crowded with people who come and go, 
jostling and being jostled. Gigantic policemen, rotund under 
their tight girdles, stand firm in the sea of people, like columns 
against which they must break. Custom-house officers in 
uniforms unbuttoned because of the heat, their cheeks dis- 
tended with tobacco, deface with long jets of brown saliva the 
place destined for the trunks ; and the trunks are no sooner 
brought up from the hold and set down there, than around 
them swarm expressmen offering checks, and carpenters armed 
with hammer and chisel to open and nail down the boxes. 
Custom-house officers plunge their arms into the open trunks, 
turning and overturning linen and dresses with all the rough 



20 OUTRE-MER 

heedlessness of men in a hurry. The trunks at last closed and 
checked are seized by porters, and sent spinning down to a 
lower story by a long wooden incline, at the risk of crushing 
them, while a pungent, sickening odor of perspiring flesh 
mingles with the confused din. Such is the entrance to the 
great American city — as swift and brutal as a round in the 
ring. All the time there are sharp-eyed little men running 
about in the chaos of people and trunks. They are reporters 
on the lookout for an interview. I see the ship's dentist 
struggling with one of them, who is asking him about the 
cholera in Italy. The dilapidated hack in which I finally seat 
myself seems like a wheeled Paradise, as it bears me away 
from the tumultuous crowd, though it is jolting over a wretched 
wooden pavement, and the quarter that lies between the wharf and 
'"ifth Avenue, where my hotel is to be found, is abominably ugly. 
Rows of red houses stretch out before me to an indefinite 
extent, all precisely alike, with sash windows and no blinds. 
Other houses appear hideous with signs, their ground floors 
occupied either with liquor saloons or with stalls set out with 
miserable wares, cheap fruits, and withered vegetables. The 
foul pavement is covered with a sticky mud, compounded of 
rubbish rather than of earth. Not a tree before these houses, 
not a grass plot ; but rails laid along the streets for tramways, 
poles for telegraph wires, and presently what seems to be a 
long double tunnel supported by iron pillars. It is the aerial 
railway, the " elevated " as they say. There are four of them 
which stretch the whole length of the city, and carry two hun- 
dred million passengers every year. During the short time 
that our way follows this tunnel I count the trains that pass 
overhead, three going down town and three up. The strong 
framework which supports them trembles under their weight 
and the fleetness of their passage. What can be the life of 
those inhabitants of this city whose windows open upon this 
incessant mad flitiht of locomotives and cars? 



THE FIRST WEEK 21 

The hack passes through two quieter streets and reaches an 
avenue, where a succession of cable cars rushes by in the same 
mad haste. An endless chain runs underground, carrying 
along the heavy cars upon rails, over which our carriage jolts. 
Their automatic movement would terrify you like a nightmare 
but for the man standing in the front. His clenched fingers 
work the handles of the lever that by turn grips and releases 
the chain, which moves invisible below the long fissure that lies 
like a third rail between the other two. There are so many of 
these cable cars, they go so fast, they so compactly block the 
avenue, that vehicles drawn by horses hardly find room to pass 
along. The latter are, therefore, becoming so rare that the 
aspect of the streets is not like any part of any European city. 
There are no fiacres such as are the gayety of Parisian streets, 
no hansoms such as make the animation of those of London, 
none of the botte which roll through Rome to the nimble trot 
of their horses. You at once perceive that that darling of the 
middle class, the private hired carriage, has no reason for being. 
The laborer and the business man have the elevated road or 
the street car that goes faster than the best horse. Those who 
are neither laborers nor business men are rich men and have 
their own carriages. 

One open place with trees and turf, dominated by a tower 
like the Giralda of Seville, is Madison Square, the point where 
commercial Broadway crosses fashionable Fifth Avenue stretch- 
ing endlessly away without cable road or elevated railway. The 
tower is surmounted with a statue, in whose outlines I recognize 
the Diana of the great sculptor, St. Gaudens, photographs of 
which I have seen. The slender figure of the goddess stands out 
finely against the blue sky. It is the first evidence of beauty 
that I have seen since I set foot outside of the ship. Below the 
Diana, all up and down the tower, is stretched in huge iron let- 
ters the announcement of a bicycle exhibition. Between the 
noble creation of the artist and the contiguous advertisement 



{ 



22 OUTRE-MER 



■; tlie contact is as close and the contrast almost as great as 
between the New York of labor, which I have just passed 
through, and the New York of wealth, which at this moment I 
am entering. Is there a cause for this total absence of transi- 
tion ? Does it betray a complete absence of that sense of har- 
mony which we call — which we used to call — taste ? Is it 
simply that the city, having grown too rapidly upon a territory 
too narrow, finds space lacking for its growth, as it is also lack- 
ing, it would appear, for the posting of bills? I leave the solv- 
ing of these problems to a time when I have not to install 
myself in a new hotel, and when I am not wearied with seven 
days at sea. A negro in livery, with smiling face and white 
teeth, in which sparkle bits of gold half as large as my finger- 
nail, has just opened the door of my carriage. I have barely 
time to speak to the clerk when another negro opens the door 
of an elevator, which mounts with dizzy rapidity to the seventh 
floor ; and now behold a third negro entering the parlor in 
which I am hastily scratching down these notes, to bring me a 
jug of filtered water, overtopped by a lump of ice almost as 
big as his head. I gaze upon him in amazement ; but he, 
much offended with my absence of mind, while waiting for 
my orders draws a key from his pocket, takes a second from a 
secretary, and a third from the door, and begins to jingle them 
to attract my attention. 

" What are you doing ? " I ask him. 

" I thought you might want to send a telegram," he replies, 
with a familiar mendacity that would disarm a slave-dealer. I 
send him for a newspaper, which he brings me. It is marked 
three cents, but he asks me ten, adding philosophically, by way 
of excuse, — 

" You know, on the other side everything is cheaper." 

Sunday. — Mass this morning in a little church at the corner 
of I'hirtieth Street. One of the facts best known and most 



THE FIRST WEEK 23 

remarked upon in France is the vitality of Catholicism in the 
United States. The names of the three great authors of this 
renascence — Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop Ireland, and Mon- 
signor Keane — are as familiar to us as to Americans them- 
selves. What is the secret of this vitality ? I shall try some 
day to find out. At present I can only grasp the too apparent 
contrast between our own churches and this one. 

On the outside, its walls of gray stone, with their fluttering 
Japanese ivy, are not very different from the other buildings in 
the block. To enter, you cross an anteroom, where you must 
pay fifteen cents, — a little more than seventy-five centimes. 
For that matter, what would the poor do in the vast hall of pol- 
ished wood, which serves as chapel ? Each seat is covered with 
leather cushions, the entrance to them barred by red silk cords, 
hanging between hooks of copper. The entire floor is carpeted ; 
the pictures on the walls are covered because it is summer. It 
gives one the impression of a prayer club. Everything is brand- 
new, opulent, comfortable, and yet religious, for the worship- 
pers follow the service without a whisper or a wandering glance. 
Recognizing copies of certain pictures, behind their green 
gauze coverings, — a Madonna of the impassioned Andrea, 
a Virgin of the lucid Raphael, Allori's tragic Judith, — 
the churches of Italy rise up before me in sudden contrast, — 
ruinous, unclean, sullied by superstition ; and yet so beautiful, 
because they have endured, because everything in them moves 
the heart with the profound emotion of the past — a long, long 
past ! 

But the worshippers who are gathered in this church have 
precisely such a building as suits them. They are men of the 
present, and for them religion is neither a reverie nor a long- 
ing. The sermon, which the priest bases upon the gospel for 
the day, — the incident of the Good Samaritan, — still farther 
reveals the close presence of things actual. He speaks of the 
descent from Jerusalem to Jericho in precisely the terms with 



24 OUTRE-MER 

which he would speak of going from up- town to the Battery. 
He refers to St. Paul, and his conversion as the apostle was 
riding near Damascus corner. In his illustrations, the word 
dollar continually recurs : " If you had made a thousand 
dollars " ..." If you had paid a hundred dollars for such a 
thing ; " and his severe, large-featured face grows sarcastic, his 
voice vehement, as he pours invectives upon the clergy of 
Europe, " with their prelates who live like princes." When 
he raises his arm, I see that the red vestment which he has 
put on for preaching shines with a briUiant newness which 
harmonizes well with this church, these seats, this carpet, these 
people, this sermon. But I ask again, at what hour and where 
do the poor folk pray? 

By carriage up Fifth Avenue and through Central Park, 
which is the Bois de Boulogne of New York. Two hours of 
the afternoon ; and I paid four dollars — say twenty francs — 
for a drive that would be worth a hundred sous with us, or five 
shillings in London. One of my steamer companions, who 
recommended this drive to me, gave me several reasons for 
its costUness. The first and most evident, I have already men- 
tioned. A carriage is a luxury, and all luxuries are expensive 
here, while the necessaries are cheaper than elsewhere. This 
is why America still tempts our laboring people, and why so 
many of its own rich men go to Europe that they may have 
these luxuries, and better ones, at a fifth or a sixth the price. 
The second reason is that the hackmen, like all other laborers, 
are bound together in an impregnable Union. 

Besides, it is but too evident that money cannot have much 
value here. There is too much of it. The interminable suc- 
cession of luxurious mansions which line Fifth Avenue proclaim 
its mad abundance. No shops, — unless of articles of luxury, 
— a few dressmakers, a few picture-dealers — the last froth of 
the spent wave of that tide of business which drowns the rest 
of the city — only independent dwelUngs, each one of which, 



THE FIRST WEEK 25 

including the ground on which it stands, impUes a revenue 
which one dares not calculate. Here and there are vast 
constructions which reproduce the palaces and chateaux of 
Europe. I recognize one French country seat of the sixteenth 
century ; another, a red and white house, is in the style of the 
time of Louis XIII. The absence of unity in this architecture 
is a sufficient reminder that this is the country of the individual 
will, as the absence of gardens and trees around these sumptu- 
ous residences proves the newness of all this wealth and of the 
city. This avenue has visibly been willed and created by sheer 
force of millions, in a fever of land speculation, which has not 
left an inch of ground unoccupied. This rapidity is again 
shown in the almost total absence of life-like figures in the 
sculptures with which the windows and colonnades of these 
impromptu palaces are decorated. An artist needs time to 
observe and patiently follow the forms of life ; and if the whole 
United States had not found means to get along without him, 
where would they have been ? They have made up for it by 
feats of energy. That is something to triumph over in the 
industrial world. The world of art requires less self-conscious- 
ness, — an impulse of life which forgets itself, the alternations 
of dreamy idleness with fervid execution. Years must pass 
before these conditions are possible on the banks of the 
Hudson. 

Is the Park also a hasty and arbitrary production ? How- 
ever that may be, the virginal vigor of the soil there bursts forth 
in foliage of surprising opulence. It seems to me — but is this 
a just view? — that there is a degree of disproportion between 
this prodigal leafage and the branches themselves, as if these 
fine trees had slighter trunks and a more nervous ramification 
than ours. Have they grown too fast, like the houses? 

The extent of the Park is enormous, and you stand amazed 
when, having followed paths embowered in verdure, others wind- 
ing around a lake, still others bordering immense fields where 



26 OUTRE-MER 

sheep are feeding, you perceive above the thick green of the 
clumps of trees a train flying over a track of red metal, thirty 
feet up in the air, and the city beginning all over again. 

This Park is simply a garden bisecting one of the avenues of 
the city, — the Seventh. A whole people throng its paths this 
Sunday afternoon, a veritable nation of working folk at rest. 
I have not met two private victorias on these roads, swarming 
as they are with vehicles. They are all pleasure carriages, 
packed full with women and children, or tilburys driven by 
their owners. I observe a sort of cart which is new to me, — 
an oblong box with a bellows top, which at need might shelter 
two persons. It is almost hidden between four enormous 
wheels of startling fragility. A horse which goes like the wind 
is attached to it without a collar, entirely free in his slight net- 
work of flexible straps. As these carriages fly past, you might 
fancy a race of huge demented spiders, so large and at the 
same time so slight is their iron framework. The people who 
pass you by in these vehicles and on the sidewalks are substan- 
tially dressed and without elegance, -^ not a single workman's 
blouse, and on the other hand not a rag nor anything which 
would betray poverty. The men are rather small, thin, and 
nervous in action. The women are small, too, and without 
much beauty. In the dress of the latter there is a visible 
abuse of high colors and of trimming. It is like an immense 
walking emporium of ready-made clothes. Nevertheless, an 
air of social health and good humor breathes from this crowd. 
The mounted policemen who occasionally pass appear as Httle 
to be watching as to be themselves in need of watching. 
What I feel most strongly, without being able to -give a posi- 
tive reason for the feeling, is that I am terribly far away, and 
in a terribly different country. 

Monday. — At what time of day do they die here ? At what 
time do they love? At what time do they think? At 



THE FIRST WEEK 27 

what time, indeed, are they men, nothing but men, as old 
Faust said, and not machines for work or locomotion ? This 
is the question I keep asking in spite of myself, after a day 
spent in the cable cars, the elevated, — the L, to borrow the 
New Yorker's abbreviation, — the electric cars, the ferry-boats, 
seeing the city. One succeeds the other so rapidly, you are 
so quickly transferred from tramway to tramway, from train 
to train, that the stranger, one who is not up to the times, feels 
a stupefaction something like that of the honest citizen at one 
of Hanlon-Lee's pantomimes. This, be it said in parenthesis, 
is probably the origin of this device in America. The acro- 
bats had only to hurry, to make haste, to excite to frenzy 
that fever for getting there which has led the people of this 
country to the singular invention of making the street walk. 

For that is what this cable tramway, this railway on the level 
of the street, these electric tramways, really are — it is the 
street which walks — which runs indeed. You miss a car — 
another is here ; so full you could hardly drop a dollar on the 
floor. You get in none the less, glad of a chance to stand 
inside on the platform, on the step, while ragged urchins, fright- 
fully thin, but all nerves and energy, manage to jump aboard of 
a car between two street corners, into an elevated car between 
two stations, crying the daily paper — no, not even that, the 
paper of the hour, of the minute. F^dison began life that way, 
legend says. 

What faces I have met in the vagaries of this aimless jour- 
ney ; what thousands of faces which I shall never see again ! 
What strikes me most in these innumerable countenances is 
the absence of interest. The contrast is extraordinary between 
the good-fellowship of the omnibus that is complet with us, 
where all the neighbors take notice of one another, where the 
merest nothing starts a conversation. Here each eye seems 
fixed upon the inner thought — upon some business — whatever 
it may be, which will not wait, and which is the reason why, 



28 OUTRE-MER 

when they leave the car, men and women run, as they ran to 
catch it, as they run up and down the stairs of the elevated 
road. 

Mr. , a brother journalist who has served me to-day as 

guide, says that they are no more pressed for time than any 
Parisian. 

" They hurry so," he said, " from mere habit, interest, nerv- 
ousness. With it all they have curious streaks of laziness. 
You will see them buy a paper in a hotel, at a restaurant, and 
pay three cents more than the marked price, because they are 
too indolent to go into the street for it." 

I begin to understand how this negligence and this activity 
belong together as I remark the rude finish of these very cars, 
the want of care in the attire of the people. But these are 
individual cases ; and you have only to come in contact with 
things as a whole to receive again that impression of a Babel 
with a splendor all its own, an impression which — shall I avow 
it? — I have felt most strongly in connection with a building 
devoted entirely to business offices, and a bridge over which 
runs a railway ! 

The building is called the Equitable, from the name of the 
insurance company that built it. It is a gigantic palace with a 
marble fagade, rising up almost at' the end of Wall Street, the 
street of the miUiards, and very near Trinity Church ceme- 
tery, where, hushed by the frantic tumult of life and the grating 
of the cable car, reposes the printer of the first newspaper pub- 
lished in New York, — William Bradford. What a tomb for a 
journalist ! 

Figures alone can give an idea — not, indeed, exact but ap- 
proximate — of this human beehive with its thousand offices. 
Mr. tells me that ten thousand persons a day use the ele- 
vator of which we availed ourselves for going up to the roof. 
The hum of life in the enormous building, the swarms of comers 
and goers, the endless ramifications of the corridors, reduce 



THE FIRST WEEK 29 

your mind almost to a stupor of admiration, sucli as you also 
feel when looking from above upon this great city. 

Far as the eye can reach it stretches away, between the two 
rivers which girdle the island, and through innumerable 
columns of smoke one is still able to distinguish the practical 
simphcity of its construction — broad, longitudinal avenues cut 
at right angles by streets, thus distributing the blocks of houses 
in equal masses. You are acquainted with the city as soon as 
you understand it. Given the number of the street, with the 
usual East or West, showing that it is on the right or left of 
Fifth Avenue, and you know within ten yards how far you have 
to go, all the blocks being of uniform size. This is not even 
a city in the sense in which we understand the word, we who 
have grown up amid the charm of irregular cities which grew 
as the trees do, slowly, with the variety, the picturesque 
character of natural things. This is a table of contents of 
unique character, arranged for convenient handhng. Seen 
from here it is so colossal, it encloses so formidable an 
accumulation of human efforts, as to overpass the bounds of 
imagination. You think you must be dreaming when you 
see beyond the rivers two other cities — Jersey City and 
Brooklyn — spread out along their shores. The latter is only a 
suburb, and it has nine hundred thousand inhabitants. 

A bridge connects New York with Brooklyn, overhanging an 
arm of the sea. Seen even from afar, this bridge astounds you 
like one of those architectural nightmares given by Piranesi in 
his weird etchings. You see great ships passing beneath it, 
and this indisputable evidence of its height confuses the mind. 
But walk over it, feel the quivering of the monstrous trellis of 
iron and steel interwoven for a length of sixteen hundred feet 
at a height of one hundred and thirty-five feet above the water ; 
see the trains that pass over it in both directions, and the steam- 
boats passing beneath your very body, while carriages come 
and go, and foot passengers hasten along, an eager crowd, and 



30 OUTRE-MER 

you will feel that the engineer is the great artist of our epoch, 
and you will own that these people have a right to plume them- 
selves on their audacity, on the go-ahead which has never 
flinched. 

At the same time you ask yourself what right they have to 
call themselves, as a people, young. They are recent, their 
advent is so astonishingly new that one can hardly believe in 
dates in the face of these prodigies of activity. But recent as 
is this civilization, it is evidently mature, at least here. The 
impression upon me this evening is that I have been exploring 
a city which is an achievement and not a beginning. Its life is 
not an experiment ; it is a mode of existence, with its incon- 
veniences as well as its splendors. For the go-ahead, the tire- 
less forward, is not confined to trains and machines. I have 
been called from this paper to reply to fifteen applications for 
autographs and six requests for interviews. This eagerness 
would make me vain if I did not know that it is the lot of every 
foreign visitor. Let but the press announce your arrival, and 
if your connections are in the slightest degree public — though 
you are here merely to avoid a scandalous lawsuit — you must 
pay your entrance fee, sign your name hundreds of times and 
proclaim aloud what you think of the country — before you 
have seen it ! A reporter has even come this evening to ask 
my opinion as to love in America, after a sojourn of forty-eight 
hours ! 

Tuesday and Wednesday. — Matters of business have called 
me again to the neighborhood of the Equitable and the 
Battery, with the effect only of renewing and heightening my 
first impressions. The less prosaic duty of securing a suit- 
able shelter for a somewhat prolonged winter sojourn has led 
me, in the course of these journeyings, to examine several 
hotels. 

Such visits give only the most superficial impressions. 



THE FIRST WEEK 31 

And yet, in every country, hotels have this documentary 
value, that they give what the people of the country ask for. 
Every one who establishes a lodging-house or a restaurant is, 
in his way, a psychologist, whose talent consists in securing 
guests. And how, if not by perceiving and ministering to 
their tastes? A simple inn, once it is successful, resembles 
the imagination of those who frequent it, and who enjoy 
themselves there because they frequent it. 

In the French provinces, for example, the hotels are in- 
differently furnished, with tiny wash-basins and water jugs, 
battered furniture, and threadbare carpets; but the food is 
nearly always excellent, and the wine cellar stocked with 
intelligence. This is indeed the taste of the middle-class 
citizen of our country, whom boarding-school and barracks 
have taught to do without comforts, who are hostile to useless 
expenditure on any large scale, economically making things 
last indefinitely. On the other hand, his sensations are acute; 
he is a high liver, knowing in wines. He likes to talk, and 
he willingly lingers over the table, in the good fellowship of 
the coffee cup and the liqueur glass. So in Italy, the grand 
dismantled palace, which so often does duty as locanda, with 
its frescoed ceilings, the great pictures on its walls, ill-warmed 
from a badly constructed chimney, with servants in tattered 
dress-coats, intelligent and familiar, with fried fish, a risotto 
3.nd fiaschi of home-made wine scattered over the table — how 
well it suits the travellers of Tuscany, of the Romagna, and 
Venice ! Not one of these features but its counterpart is to 
be found, in the man accustomed to a poverty-stricken life in 
some setting of magnificence, naturally kindly to his inferiors 
and indulgent as to their personal appearance, son of a coun- 
try where money is scarce and industrial activity still more 
infrequent, and where parsimony governs even food. So, 
again, the English hotel, with the abundance of its little 
rooms, its distant and active servants, its copious morning 



32 OUTRE-MER 

breakfast, the great pieces of roast meat for its cold lunch, and 
its dinner served at separate tables, that by themselves alone 
reveal the love of home and the reserve which are the ground- 
work of nineteen Englishmen out of twenty. They have a 
word for it for which neither Frenchmen nor Italians have a 
translation, so little have they the thing; it is privacy, that 
which a gentleman is bound to respect in the private life of 
another gentleman, and the right to make respected in his 
own life. Even in a transient caravanserai they find means 
for having this law observed. 

These various pictures and reflections followed me as I 
crossed the threshold of certain New York hotels which had 
been pointed out to me as most recently built. They are all 
edifices of the kind which, in Chicago, they call " sky scrapers" 
and "cloud pressers." One is ten stories high, another twelve, 
another fourteen. The last and newest has seventeen. 

First comes the marble hall, more or less splendid in deco- 
ration, upon which frequently opens a restaurant or bar, a 
cloak-room, a book-store, and other shops. An index points 
you to the fact that the barber shop is in the basement. 
Behind a grating are the elevators, — four, five, six, — ready 
to mount up with the rapidity of an electric despatch. Yes- 
terday I felt as if the Americans made the streets walk; to-day 
I feel as if they made the floors of their houses fly. 

These hotels, foolishly sumptuous, have carpets only on the 
passageways. The stairways show their naked marble, on 
which no one ever sets foot, unless, haply, the servants, 
who also have their own elevators. And all along the walls 
of the passages, as on those of the smallest chambers, are fan- 
tastic appliances for keeping up this chase of the stories, and 
giving you, if you live on the fifteenth floor, the sensation of 
being on the first. Upon a box in each corridor are written 
these words: "United States Mail Chute." I ask their mean- 
ing, and my guide shows me a long glass channel, down which 



THE FIRST WEEK 33 

a letter thrown into this opening will descend to the box to 
which the postman has access. My attention is attracted by 
a mysterious disk covered with printed characters, to which 
a needle is attached by a pivot. My guide explains to me 
that by pressing a button the traveller can order to be brought 
him the thing to whose name he has directed the point of this 
needle. I glance at the curious list, and perceive that I may 
thus procure for myself, within five minutes, the whole series 
of cocktails and champagnes, all the newspapers and reviews, 
a one- or a two-horse carriage, a doctor, a barber, a railway 
ticket, all sorts of cold or warm dishes, or a theatre ticket. 
The only wonder is that the machine has not been so far per- 
fected as to offer the means of being married or divorced, of 
making one's will, and of voting. 

While awaiting these necessary improvements, it is proper 
to add that these niceties of refinement are merely comple- 
mentary to others more appreciable. You can count the 
bedrooms which have not their private dressing-room, with 
bath-room, where hot and cold water run at will at all hours 
of the day and night. And with this, a meaningless luxury 
of woodwork and draperies. As I transcribe these notes, I 
see again a tiny parlor on the ninth floor of one of these 
hotels, at the corner opposite to and at precisely the same 
height as the clock in the tower of a neighboring church. 
With its sofa and armchairs of Havana silk, its narrow bands 
of soft white silk on the tables and the backs of chairs, the 
light mahogany of its woodwork, the fine quality of its wicker 
chairs, and the etchings on the walls, one would never believe 
it to be a hotel room, to be let for the day or night. And 
there are two hundred of these bedrooms and parlors in this 
immense building. 

Look at it now from without, and consider that all these 
apartments are warmed by an apparatus of metal tubes, 
through which hot water passes up or down at the turn of a 



34 OUTRE-MER 

wheel; that electricity lights its uttermost corner and keeps 
everything going, from the bells to the clocks; that gas is laid 
on everywhere alongside of the electric lights, in case the 
latter should give out. Think then of the innumerable quantity 
of pipes which perforate this sort of living creature of brick 
and iron. It does not move, indeed; but at an incredible 
distance overhead it breathes out a column of black smoke, 
thick as that of a steamer. Think what human ingenuity is 
required for the adjustment of so many small pieces! I 
counted, in my visits to these five hotels, five different sys- 
tems for emptying the wash-basins and bath-tubs. Translate 
this humble detail into concrete reality. It means that five 
subtle intellects, at the service of five men determined to 
make a fortune, have studied this apparently childish prob- 
lem, in the hope, justified by the result, of meeting with 
capitalists who will patronize the invention, and architects 
who will adopt it. Is it thus from the small to the great? 
Very probably; and this genius of novelty is evidently in its 
youth. But, seeing what a travelling American requires for 
his occasional shelter, recognizing how much money is nec- 
essary for the satisfaction of so complicated a desire for com- 
fort, measuring the degree of ingenuity here attained in 
making matter subserve to the needs of man, how can we 
admit that this civilization is only a first sketch? It is at 
once clearly manifest, to him who reviews it without preju- 
dice, that these are signs of maturity far rather than of experi- 
ment and beginning. But New York does not sum up the 
whole United States, any more than Paris sums up France, 
and we must see. 

Thursday. — Two oases in the tourist existence which for 
four days I have been leading here. A luncheon at the Play- 
ers' Club, with men of letters connected with a great review, 
and an evening at the theatre with another literary man, who 



THE FIRST WEEK 35 

manages an important newspaper. I jot down my impres- 
sions, without being careful to connect them with those that 
have gone before, quite understanding that, though it is always 
legitimate to set down physical things, one must exercise great 
care when it comes to moral things. I hope to remain in the 
United States for several months, that my judgment of these 
things may be accurate. 

This club has a singular history, and confirms what I have 
often heard of the peculiar position of comedians in America. 
It was founded by the actor Booth. He bought the house 
and furnished it. He adorned it with precious collections, 
gathered by his own care, and entirely composed of objects 
which have to do with the theatre. He then gave it to the 
club, reserving the right to occupy one apartment, and there 
he died. I was struck by the extreme decorum of the sur- 
roundings. The square before the windows, Gramercy Park, 
looks like a bit of Kensington. The respectability of the 
artist is written everywhere, and a thousand details attest that 
it is not personal to him; I mean that it is the comedian's 
art itself, of which this house reveals the worship. 

Two fine portraits, one of Booth himself, the other of Jeffer- 
son — by the painter Sargent — show faces deeply moulded 
by thought and will, almost too intellectual for a profession 
which demands more of instinct, of unconsciousness. All 
the other actors whose pictures adorned the walls have this 
same expression, grave even to severity. I seemed to see 
in them the energy of the race applied to culture. One must 
hear the Americans utter the word art, all by itself, without 
the article, to understand the intense ardor of their desire for 
refinement; and this word refined also recurs continually in 
the conversation of the members with whom I visited the 
club. 

You hear few or no anecdotes of private life in the conver- 
sations suggested by the portraits. On the other hand, I am 



36 OUTRE-MER 

astonished to observe how carefully they guard the remem- 
brance of the slightest shades of expression observed by these 
actors in their play, and especially how the interpretation of 
such or such a part in Shakespeare fires their minds. Once 
again I perceive the national strength of this poet's genius, 
and how all literature derives from him in every English- 
speaking country. Moliere has no such position with us, nor 
Goethe in Germany. Their work does not radiate that unique 
and continuous influence which Dante also exerts over the 
Italian mind. Perhaps Americans feel a more passionate at- 
tachment to Shakespeare than even the English. It is their 
way to cling fast to a tradition, and I have already fancied 
more than once that I perceived the sense of need of a more 
distant background in this country, where all is present and 
actual. I gained a new proof of this, though a very slight 
one, while walking out with one of my companions of this 
morning, who directed my attention to two lanterns planted 
before a house. 

"They were put there," he said, "during the time when the 
master of this house was the first magistrate of New York. It 
is the custom. He died, and they were left there. You 
cannot understand that, — you who live in a country which 
has a history, — but I like to look at them because they have 
been there for twenty-five years, and it is good to find a little 
of the past in a city so new." 

Nothing, on the other hand, can be more exclusively and 
absolutely local or less Shakespearian than the play to which 
another brother journalist took me in the evening. 

" It is not very good," he said, "but you will see what suits 
our public." 

We found ourselves in a little theatre, which possessed the 
peculiarity of having almost no boxes. No New York theatre 
has more, except the Opera. Is it due to want of skill, or 
haste in the construction of the halls? Is it the wish to in- 



THE FIRST WEEK 37 

crease the number of sittings? Is it a sign of democratic 
manners? Or is it simply the ever-present precaution against 
fire? However this may be, men and women without dis- 
tinction, and of ahnost all classes, are crowded together in 
the orchestra and balcony. They follow the drama with pas- 
sionate interest, though they already know it, for it has been 
given an incalculable number of times. Its name is The New 
South, and the mere title of the piece suggests curious differ- 
ences, not only of manners but of laws. 

A Northern officer, stationed in the South a few years after 
the war, finds himself involved in a quarrel with the brother 
of his fiancee, a Georgian planter. This man snatches his 
sword from him and threatens him. The officer defends him- 
self with the scabbard. He strikes his adversary upon the 
head, and the latter falls. The victor hastens to seek for succor, 
and during his absence a negro whom the planter had formerly 
insulted, and who sees him lying unconscious, cuts the plant- 
er's throat with the officer's sword. The latter, convicted of 
murder, is sentenced to perpetual imprisonment. His fiancee 
believes in him. She appeals to a law peculiar to that State, 
which authorizes any citizen, with the authorization of the 
governor, to choose a convict for a servant. She releases 
from prison the supposed murderer of her brother and takes 
him into her service, that he may prove his innocence. The 
character of this girl, so extraordinary in the eyes of a for- 
eigner, arouses tempests of applause. When she says to her 
father, ''Go you your way; I will go mine," the enthusiasm 
of the public exceeds all bounds. 

The fjersonal force of will, the impelling power of con- 
science in the being who acts according to its dictates, this, 
doubtless, is what these people were applauding. By contrast 
I picture to myself how a French audience would receive this 
girl's attitude toward her father. I must believe that these 
spectators do not look upon family relations precisely as we 



38 OUTRE-MER 

do ; for peals of laughter greeted another scene which would 
rudely shock a Parisian audience. The heroine's sister — in 
love with a doctor, to whom she first makes a mock declara- 
tion in the course of a consultation in which she puts out a 
tongue a foot long — surprises her father in the act of asking 
the hand of an old lady in marriage. 

The insolent girl's boisterous outburst of laughter, as she 
cuts a caper, shaking her finger at the old gentleman, appeared 
highly gratifying to the audience, who evidently found this 
absolute equality between parents and children the most nat- 
ural thing in the world. My companion, to whom I made 
some such remark, admitted that the family is much more 
united with us than in Anglo-Saxon countries, and notably 
than in America. 

"But," he said, "you have this evil, that with you a girl 
cannot live her own life apart from her family. Her parents 
love her too much and she loves them too much. She never 
learns to depend upon herself. She has no 'self-reliance,' 
as we say. This independence of ours has the advantage that 
a young woman without fortune expects to earn her bread 
honestly and courageously, like a man. She becomes a doc- 
tor, a professor, the secretary of a company, no matter what, 
— and she is happy." 

Can he be right on the last point? Neither he nor I will 
ever know. As I make my way homeward, I recall to mind, 
as bearing out his assertion, the few minutes after luncheon 
which I spent in visiting the offices of the Review with which 
my hosts of the Players are associated. I see again the vari- 
ous women there engaged, in all departments of the work; 
one, especially, young and graceful, seated before a type- 
writing machine, copying a manuscript. Her taper fingers 
played upon the keys of the instrument as upon those of a 
piano. It was a suitable work, dainty, not too fatiguing, and 
I could read upon her charming face a deep serenity of con- 



THE FIRST WEEK 39 

science, a calm will, a dignity that was touching in a creature 
so young and evidently so poor. Must we believe that the 
active independence of such a woman necessarily results in 
a relaxation of family ties? It is possible, after all; for the 
continuance of the family appears to be entirely conditioned 
upon the right of primogeniture, or at least upon freedom of 
bequest, and upon that inequality which appears to be, of all 
others, most unjust, — that of inheritance. 

Friday. — I resume my journal on the train between New 
York and Newport, very comfortably settled in one of those 
Pullman coaches which bear the pretentious name of palace 
car. By way of parenthesis, let me say, that though I have 
not yet been a week in the United States, I can bear witness 
to the habitual excess of metaphor, which seems to be an 
American instinct. The most insignificant production is 
advertised as "the best in the world." A victorious pugilist 
becomes "the world's champion." I happened to open the 
annual report of the West Point Academy, and there I read, 
"Science and art, in which the cadets excel." 

Where does naturalness end? Where does that charlatan- 
ism begin, which is so well defined by the three well-nigh 
untranslatable words which we are beginning to adopt and 
practise, the puff, the boom, and the bliiff'^ Certainly, the 
splendors of a real palace have nothing in common, with the 
lavish elegance of these long carriages. Such as they are, 
their luxury puts to shame the best F^uropean railway carriages. 

They are so connected as to form a covered vestibule from 
one end of the train to the other. A buffet is attached to 
them; and, if the journey is to be not of six hours but of 
several days, bath-rooms, a barber's shop, and a reading-room 
will be added. It can hardly be called extravagance to travel 
in them; for there is only one class in the United States, and 
the supplement which gives a right to seats in these cars is 



40 OUTRE-MER 

insignificant. I paid only a dollar for my Pullman chair from 
New York to Newport. 

Here again are fifty signs of that singular bent toward com- 
plexity which has struck me every moment since I landed. 
Everything is fitted, planned, compressed, so as to get the 
greatest number of adjustable articles into the smallest possi- 
ble space. The arm-chair in which you are seated turns upon 
a pivot, and may be tipped to any angle that pleases you. If 
you want your window open, a negro brings a metal screen 
which he slips into grooves cunningly devised between the 
ledge of the window and the raised sash. If you desire to 
take luncheon, play cards, or write, he places before you a 
table which rests upon the floor by a single movable foot, the 
other end being fitted into the side of the car. Boys are con- 
tinually passing along, offering newspapers and books. I 
distinguish among them Alphonse Daudet's Sappho, with 
a second title added. Or, Lured by a Bad WoDian' s Fatal 
Beauty ! Everywhere is a profusion of rugs, draperies, carved 
mahogany, and nickel-plated ornaments. The very negroes 
who pass back and forth, now in uniform and now in white 
jacket and napkin, seem like ornamental animals, a whim of 
the company, who have provided for my benefit this outland- 
ish display. Armed with a sort of feather brush, which they 
wield with simian agility, they move about as we approach 
the stations, impartially dusting passengers and furniture, and 
equally without consulting their wishes. I just now saw one 
of them whisk off the hat of an old gentleman who was read- 
ing the paper. He brushed it, and replaced it upon the 
sufferer's head, without saying with your leave or by your 
leave. The old gentleman did not so much as raise his eyes. 

Town and country succeed one another. The train passes 
at full speed over low bridges, spanning broad rivers which 
flow between forests, — remains of forests, rather, — violated, 
massacred forests, whose vigorous vegetation still bears wit- 



THE FIRST WEEK 41 

ness to the primitive splendor of this country, before "the 
pale-faced destroyer of forests " had set foot upon it. Rows 
upon rows of cottages, without gardens, without a single one 
of those little, open-air drawing-rooms in which the French 
citizen loves to saunter, pruning- shears and watering-pot in 
hand. But where shall Americans find the time to saunter, 
the time to watch the budding rose trees, to let themselves 
live? Their rose trees are those vast, ever-multiplying fac- 
tory chimneys. Their gardens are these houses, so rapidly 
built that a single generation sees them increase fivefold, ten- 
fold, and more. In 1800, New Haven, through which we 
have just passed, had five thousand inhabitants; to-day it has 
eighty thousand, and its commerce is valued at more than a 
hundred and fifty million francs a year. A little way back it 
was Bridgeport, which last year put out a hundred millions 
worth of sewing-machines and carriages; or Hartford, where 
insurance companies have an aggregate capital of seven hun- 
dred millions of francs. These figures become, as it were, 
concrete in view of this landscape, which they explain and 
with which they blend, so many are the steamboats in the 
most insignificant ports, the electric railways in the city 
streets, the factories in the country towns, and the advertise- 
ments, advertisements, everywhere. I had taken out paper 
to make a general summary of the impressions of this first 
week. I cannot do it, so much is my attention absorbed by 
the medley of primitive scenery — so little removed from 
aboriginal wildness — and exaggerated industrialism. 

There is hardly any motion of the car, notwithstanding our 
great speed. A pamphlet by one of our most distinguished 
engineers, M. de Chasseloup-Laubat,^ which I read before 
leaving home, had already explained this to me, pointing out 
the wisdom with which the builder had placed the long car 

^ Travels in America, chiejly to Chicago, by the Marquis of Chasseloup- 
Laubat, Paris, 1893. 



42 OUTRE-MER 

upon small, six-wheeled trucks, in such a way as to bring the 
seats outside of the axis of trepidation. Through this pam- 
phlet I also made acquaintance with the locomotive, that strong 
and beautiful engine of speed, here built very high and so 
arranged that through his cab windows the engineer can see 
the track, as it lies ribbon-like before him. All the mechan- 
ism — cylinders, valves, levers — is exposed, and within easy 
reach. The forward part rests upon a small guiding truck, 
which admits of shorter curves, and a more slightly built track. 
Who invented all these improvements? Who thought out all 
the strangely complicated details of these cars? 

The answer is always the same; everybody and nobody, a 
will always under control, an ever- watchful eye, an intrepid 
search for novelty, and an insatiable longing for improvement, 
which, so far, seems to me the most marked feature of Ameri- 
can civilization, and the one least expected. Nevertheless, 
if I were obliged to return to Europe to-morrow, it is in this 
thought that I should sum up the impressions of my first rapid 
contact with this people. They seem, in fact, to have tri- 
umphed over time, since this extreme attainment of luxury 
touches so closely the barbarism of the West, and still more 
undisguisedly that of the popular quarters of New York. I 
am curious to know whether I shall find the same contrast, the 
same astonishing differences of atmosphere, in the watering- 
place where I shall be this evening, and of which all the 
Americans who have spoken to me of it seem a little proud 
and a little ashamed. 

"There is only one Newport in the world," they say; in- 
variably adding, "But Newport is only a clique of million- 
aires, only a 'set ' ; it is not America." 

"Why not ?" I have several times asked. 

"You will understand when you have l)een there," they 
reply, no less invariably. "There are more millions of dol- 
lars represented in the small tip of that little island than in 
all London and Paris together." 



Ill 

SOCIETY 

I. A Summer City 

I CAME to Newport for a few days. I have remained here 
a whole month, taking my part in this hfe which has indeed 
no counterpart, at least, not to my knowledge. Neither Deau- 
ville nor Brighton nor Biarritz resembles it, nor Cannes, although 
the last approaches it in the splendor of its villas and the 
almost total absence of the lower middle class. But Cannes 
is a Cosmopolis like Rome or Florence, perhaps more so, while 
Newport is exclusively, absolutely American. A few European 
visitors have passed through it this summer, on their way to 
Chicago and the World's Fair. Usually they may be counted 
by six or seven. The French know nothing of Newport. The 
Enghsh — a very few of them — come here for the yachting ; 
but they prefer the Isle of Wight, with Cannes and the con- 
venient Solent. 

The small number of travellers, explained by its remoteness 
and the shortness of the season, gives this watering-place an 
inveterately national character. No ; this elegant coterie, or, 
as the detractors of Newport scornfully call it, this " set," is 
not America, but it is American society ; and social life, empty 
and artificial as it may appear to be, is always bound by deep- 
lying secret fibres to the country of which it is the flower — a 
flower sometimes insipid, more often poisonous. Even when 
its standards, as in France, are totally different from the stand- 
ards of the country in general, it reveals in its adherents the 

43 



44 OUTRE-MER 

spiritual faults and virtues which are peculiar to the race. The 
idlers bring the same susceptibility, the same temper, the same 
intelligence, to their amusements, or their attempts at amuse- 
ment, which the industrious bring to their toil. 

In the upper circles of Parisian life, for example, all the 
strength and all the weakness of the French nature are found 
devoted to the arts, to luxury, to amusement. Extreme vivacity 
of thought, with its subtle variations, criticism with its starthng 
destruction of illusion and its unexpected betrayals into enthu- 
siasm, a mad hardihood of irony, with bondage to public 
opinion, an indescribable mediocrity of human nature, an air 
of good taste even in folly, above all, a charm, a spirit of 
sociability, pervade the atmosphere of our clubs, our salons, 
our restaurants, theatres, promenades. National character has 
always its own shades of individuality in its vices and its vir- 
tues, its frivolities and its toils. This national physiognomy 
is what we have to discern ; and every datum is of value, from 
the hall of a casino to a church, from the prattle of a woman 
of the world to the utterances of a revolutionary laborer. 

I am very sure, therefore, that any one who has eyes to see 
may discern the American spirit — the real interest and the 
chief reason of my journey — behind the ostentation of New- 
port. But have I these eyes ? At any rate, here is a bundle of 
sketches from life taken on the spur of the moment in response 
to the first questions which one naturally asks in making a study 
of people of the world. How are they housed, and with what 
furniture do they surround themselves? How do they recruit 
their numbers? How do they amuse themselves? How do 
they converse ? More general inquiries will come later, if they 
are to come at all. 

How are they housed? Detached villas, very near the 
street, with greenish, most velvety lawns and bronze figures 



SOCIETY 45 

under the trees amid clumps of blue hortensias ; porticoes 
before the doors, over which flutters the Japanese ivy, rapid 
growing, not evergreen like the other, but fading every season ; 
graceful symbol of the American impatience which cannot 
wait. There are twenty, thirty, forty different styles of con- 
struction, almost as many as there are dwellings ; some square 
and squat, others tall and slender, others slender and long ; 
all with guillotine and bow windows, almost all of painted 
wood, which clothes them, as it were, in a thin dark sheath of 
elegant cleanliness — and so on indefinitely along Bellevue 
Avenue, Narragansett Avenue, all the streets of the new New- 
port which, within a few years, the caprice of millionaires has 
built upon the cliff; for this part of the town has only yes- 
terday become fashionable. 

The other, the real town, is down near the shore, with modest 
little houses of white wood which have a grace all their own. 
Somehow they suggest the cabin of primitive times, the frail 
rustic shelter built by the colonist's own hands, in this land of 
forests, with its rough-hewn beams and ill-matched boards. 
To this day stone buildings are rare in the United States. 
Brick and iron have succeeded to wood. To quarry and dress 
stone requires too much both of time and labor. 

Between old Newport, where the quiet homely life keeps on 
all through the winter, and the other, the summer Newport, 
fashionable and transient, there is no intermediate. Nothing 
suggests the rough draught of a watering-place ; first efforts cor- 
rected, worked over and over, a gradual encroachment of 
fashion. The same outbreak of individuality which reared the 
palaces of Fifth Avenue in New York, almost as by Aladdin's 
lamp, created in a flash of miracle this town of cottages. The 
only difference is in the complicated architecture where the 
rich have vied with the rich as to who shall excel the others. 
The " go-ahead " American spirit is seen here in a costHness of 
construction very significant, when one reflects that these dwell- 



46 OUTRE-MER 

ings do duty for six weeks, perhaps for two months, in the 
year, and that each one takes for granted such accessories as 
a four-in-hand, a yacht, or perhaps two, for cruising along the 
coast, a private car for railway journeys, a New York house 
and another country house! 

One of these men has spent some time in England, and 
it has pleased him to build for himself on one of these Rhode 
Island lawns an English abbey of the style of Queen Elizabeth. 
It rises up, gray and stern, so like, so perfect, that it might, ' 
without changing a single stone, be transported to Oxford on 
the shores of Isis, to make a pendant to the delicious cloister 
of Magdalen or the fagade of Oriel. Another man loves 
France, and he has seen fit to possess in sight of the Atlantic 
a chateau in the style of the French Renascence. Here is 
the chateau ; it reminds you of Azay, Chenonceaux, and the 
Loire, with its transparent ribbon of water winding idly in and 
out amid the yellow sand of the islands. A third has built 
a marble palace precisely like the Trianon, with Corinthian 
pillars as large as those of the Temple of the Sun at Baalbek. 
And these are not weak imitations, pretentious and futile 
attempts, such as in every country bring ridicule upon brag- 
garts and upstarts. No. In detail and finish they reveal con- 
scientious study, technical care. Evidently the best artist has 
been chosen and he has had both freedom and money. 

Especially money ! Caprices like these take for granted 
such quantities of it that after a walk from cottage to cottage, 
from chateau to abbey, you half fancy that you have been vis- 
iting some isle consecrated to the god Plutus, whose most mod- 
ern incarnation is the god Dollar. But this is a Plutus who 
yesterday sat at the hearthstone of Penia, the untamed goddess 
of poverty ; a Plutus whom neither wealth nor luxury has ener- 
vated or enfeebled ; a Plutus who, being no longer obliged to 
work, wills that his gold shall work, that it shall make itself 
manifest, spread itself, " show off," to use the real Yankee word. 



SOCIETY 47 

And this gold makes itself so manifest, it shows off with such 
violent intensity, that it impresses you like the deploying of an 
army. Flaubert wrote to one of his pupils : " If you cannot 
construct the Parthenon, build a pyramid." All America seems 
to be instinctively repeating to itself in other words this stern 
but stimulating counsel. As in the harbor and streets of New 
York you are dismayed at so much activity, so in these New- 
port avenues you are amazed at so much wealth. It either 
revolts or charms you, according as you lean toward socialism 
or snobbery. The psychologist who looks upon a city as a 
naturalist looks upon an ant-hill, will recognize in it the fact 
which I observed at the very first, — something indescribably , 
extravagant, unbridled. The American spirit seems not to 
understand moderation. Their high business buildings are too 
high. Their pleasure- houses are too elegant. Their fast trains 
go too fast. Their newspapers have too many pages ; too much 
news. And when they set themselves to spend money, they are 
obliged to spend too much in order to have the feeling of spend- 
ing enough. 

How do they furnish their houses ? 

I have in mind, as I write these words, the interior of some 
fifty of these villas, perhaps more. From the week of my 
arrival, upon the presentation of my letters of introduction, I 
was caught up in the whirlwind of luncheons, coaching-parties, 
yachtings, dinners, and balls, which for several weeks sweeps 
over Newport like a simoom. " Be in the rush," says an adver- 
tisement in the electric car which runs between the beach and 
the lower town. A recommendation of a special brand of 
yeast accompanies this eloquent appeal, this " all aboard " 
which the Americans speedily force you to act upon. 

Their energy extends even to their hospitality, which bestirs 
itself in your behalf, multiplying its " five-o'clock teas " and its 
" to meets." It is a warm spontaneity of welcome of which we 



48 OUTRE-MER 

have no notion in Latin countries. With us the foreigner may 
get into society if he settles down and does us the hojior of 
preferring our country to his own. As for him who is simply 
passing through not to return, it takes us some time to over- 
come a certain distrust ; we do not, without a thorough ac- 
quaintance, pass over from formal courtesy to intimacy. The 
American throws his house wide open to you as soon as you 
are duly presented. He wants you to know his friends ; he 
wants all his friends to treat you as he does. 

Slanderers say that there is no merit in this ; that their large 
way of living prevails in all Anglo-Saxon countries where chil- 
dren are many, needs complicated, incomes proportionately 
large, and economy unknown. One more guest hardly counts 
in such a home. This is true. Still I think I perceive here a 
feeling more complex than that opulent and indifferent hospi- 
tality which is still that of wealthy Orientals. 

The American, who lives so fast, carries to the highest pitch 
a fondness for seeing himself live. It seems as if he looked 
upon himself and his surroundings in the light of a singular 
experiment in social life, and as if he hardly knew what he 
ought to think of it. He makes it a point that you, a Euro- 
pean, shall be correctly informed before judging of this experi- 
ment, and he helps to inform you. " You see such or such a 
one," he will say to you. "He is an American of this or that 
type. Read such a book — you will find there a true picture 
of the American of that State." If he knows that you are 
travelling for the purpose of taking notes, he is disturbed, and 
yet he finds pleasure in it as an act of homage. He wants 
your notes to be taken from life. If he sees in you a simple 
tourist, he wants your reports when you return home to be 
something other than the erroneous legends of which, to his 
exasperation, he finds traces in our • newspapers. There is a 
curious mixture of doubt and pride in the pleasure which he 
feels in escorting you from one end of his house to the other. 



SOCIETY 49 

showing you in a breath the picture gallery and the linen 
closet, the drawing-rooms and the bed-chambers. One of 
their best novehsts, Howells, has sagaciously noted this peculiar 
trait of character, this facility of offering oneself as a lesson of 
things. 

"We men of the modern world," says March, in A Hazard 
of New Fortunes, " are inclined to take ourselves too objec- 
tively, to consider ourselves more representative than is 
necessary." / 

Meanwhile, to the professional observer this turn of mind 
lightens half his task. It is so difficult in Italy, Spain, Ger- 
many, in France itself, to picture to oneself the " home " of 
those we know the best, and yet the witness that tells the most 
is the objects which we gather around us according to our own 
whims. A drawing-room, a bed-chamber, a dining-room, have 
a physiognomy, almost a countenance, in the likeness of our 
tastes, our needs, the things in ourselves which often we our- 
selves do not suspect. 

A first impression emerges from the hom.es of Newport. I( 
ought to be correct, so much does it accord with the rest of 
American life, even outside of villas like these. This is a new 
evidence of excess, abuse, absence of moderation. On the 
floors of halls which are too high there are too many precious 
Persian and Oriental rugs. There are too many tapestries, too 
many paintings on the walls of the drawing-rooms. The guest- 
chambers have too many bibelots, too much rare furniture, and 
on the lunch or dinner table there are too many flowers, too 
many plants, too much crystal, too much silver. 

At this moment I can see in the centre of one of these 
tables a vase of solid silver, large and deep as the pot of a 
huge plant, too small, however, for a bunch of grapes, a prodi- 
gal bunch with grapes as large as small cannon balls. I see 
again a screen made of an Italian painting of the school of the 

K 



50 OUTRE-MER 

Carracci, cut into four parts. The canvas has not been much 
injured and the work was well done, but what a symbol of this 
perpetual extravagance of luxury and refinement ! 

This excess has its prototype in the rose so justly called 
the " American beauty," enormous bunches of which crown 
these tables. It has so long a stem, it is so intensely red, so 
wide open, and so strongly perfumed, that it does not seem 
like a natural flower. It requires the greenhouse, the exposi- 
tion, a public display. Splendid as it is, it makes one long 
for the frail wild eglantine with its rosy petals which a breath 
of wind will crumple. For the eglantine is a bit of nature, and 
also of aristocracy, at least in the sense in which we Europeans 
understand the word, for with us it is inseparable from an idea 
of soft coloring and absence of pretension. It is certain that 
1 this excess reveals in this people an energy much more like 
that of the Renascence, for example, under'divers forms, than 
.that meagreness of individuality which we moderns disguise 
'lunder the name of distinction. Tha't vigor of blood and 
nerves which has enabled the men of the United States to 
conquer fortune, persists in him through all his fortunes and 
manifests itself by splendor within the house as it was first 
manifested by splendor outside of it. You find vigor every- 
where, even in the senseless prodigalities of high life. 

Yet, these millionaires do not entirely accept themselves. 
This is the second impression forced upon you by a more atten- 
tive observation of these " halls " and drawing-rooms. They 
do not admit that they are thus different from the Old World, or 
if they admit it, it is to insist that if they chose they could equal 
the Old World, or, at least, could enjoy it. 

■, " We have made money enough to be artists now," said an 
architect to me, "and we have no time to wait. So I am studying 
the French eighteenth century ; I intend to build houses of that 
type, with every modern improvement, — water, light, electricity." 



SOCIETY SI 

His patriotism is perfectly sincere, very intense, and he makes 
it consist in the conquest or at least the loan of a foreign style ! 
The furnishings of the Newport houses betray a similar effort, 
— a constant, tireless endeavor to absorb European ideas. One 
might count in these villas all the articles made in America. 
It is in Europe that the silk of these stuffed chairs and these 
curtains was woven ; in Europe that these chairs and tables 
were turned. This silverware came from Europe, and this 
dress was woven, cut, sewn in Europe ; these shoes, stockings, 
gloves came from there. "When I was in Paris; " "Then we 
go to Paris ; " " We want to go to Paris to buy our gowns." 

These expressions continually recur in conversation, and it 
was certainly a Parisian salon which served as model of the one 
in which you find yourself. These toilettes are surely modelled 
on the same pattern as those of the elegant Parisian women. 
Only, drawing-room and dresses alike have, like everything else, 
that indescribable something too much. The fashion of these 
gowns is not of to-day but of to-morrow. The dressmakers 
have a very expressive way of noting this almost indescribable 
shade of difference. They say, " We will try the new designs 
first on the foreigners — then we shall weed them out for the 
Parisian women." 

Thus is explained this characteristic of the excessive ; this 
art of being on dress parade, which these women — often so 
beautiful — still further heighten by a profusion of jewels worn 
in daylight. At noon they will have at their waists turquoises 
as big as almonds, pearls as large as filberts at their throats, 
rubies and diamonds as large as their finger-nails. Yes, it is 
indeed Europe, but overgrown, exaggerated ; and this inordi- 
nate imitation only accentuates the difference between the Old 
World and the New. 

Among the freaks of decoration thus borrowed from our 
country, one has become singularly changed during its passage 



52 OUTRE-MER 

of the Atlantic. I speak of the taste for old things — the fanr ^ 
for bric-a-brac and bibelots so characteristic of our age. it 
has become hateful to us, because universal competition has 
so raised the prices that very few European fortunes are large 
enough to permit it. Counterfeiting has followed, and second- 
rate articles are especially abundant. 

The Americans have come to market with their full purses. 
With us a millionaire is a man who has a million francs. Here 
a millionaire is one who has a miUion dollars ; that is, five 
million francs. They have brought to market that universal 
knowledge which comes from the constant habit of having 
seriously undertaken collecting and looked at it in the light of 
a true lesson in things. For the last thirty or forty years, 
thanks to their full purses, they have laid hands upon the finest 
pictures, tapestries, carvings, medals, not only of France, Eng- 
land, Holland, Italy, but also of Greece, Egypt, India, Japan. 
Hence they have in their town and country houses a wealth 
of masterpieces worthy of a museum. In some Newport villas 
which I could name, is an entire private gallery, which has 
been transported thither bodily ; its original owner having 
spent years in collecting it from among the rarest works of the 
early German school. And they keep on in this way ! The 
other day I heard an amateur say sadly, alluding to the finan- 
cial crisis which happens to bear heavily upon Italy and the 
United States at once : — 

" The Italians are rather low down just now, and there are 
things to be had sub rosa. But at present nobody can profit 
by it." 

One asks oneself where they would put these Italian things, 
so completely covered by paintings is the Cordovan leather 
which covers the walls of their houses. And then there are 
the glass cases under which treasures of cut stones await the 
magnifying-glass, with enamels, engraved armor, ancient books, 
medals, especially portraits. In two adjacent villas, a quarter 



SOCIETY 53 

of an hour apart, I thus saw the portrait of a great Genoese 
seigneur, a Venetian admiral, an English lord of the last cen- 
tury, that of Louis XV. by Vanloo, with the inscription " Given 
by the King," that of Louis XIV. by Mignard, with the same 

inscription, that of Henry IV. by Porbus. F , who does 

not like the Americans, said to me with irony : — 

" Yes ; they have the portrait of the great King, but where 
is their grandfather's portrait? " 

And he attributes this love of old pictures to a vague and 
awkward attempt to make a false gallery of ancestors. In my 
opinion he does not recognize the sincerity, almost the pathos, 
of this love of Americans for surrounding themselves with 
things around which there is an idea of time and of stability. 
This sensation, so difficult for us to conceive, and which my 
companion of the Players artlessly expressed to me in New 
York, is intelligible to me, and after these few weeks of the 
United States I feel it myself It is almost a physical satisfac- 
tion of the eyes to meet here the faded colors of an ancient 
painting, the blurred stamp of an antique coin, the softened 
shades of a tapestry of the Middle Ages. In this country, 
where everything is of yesterday, they hunger and thirst for the 
long ago. We must believe that the soul of man is possessed 
by an indestructible desire to be surrounded with things of 
the past, since these extravagances of luxury subserve such a 
desire. They do not discern it in themselves, but they feel 
it all the same. Last week one of these men ordered his car- 
riage to turn back that he might show me the statue of a New- 
porter who was a friend of his grandfather. 

" One likes to think of a time so far away," he said. 

This desire for a deeply prepared soil is just what a tree 
would feel on being transplanted to a new place with its roots 
too near the surface. This unconscious effort to surround 
themselves with the past, to ennoble themselves by it, is what 
saves these homes of millionaires from being coarse, so formed 



\\\ 



54 OUTRE-MER 

by sheer force of money, and for the purpose of showing that 
they were so formed. It is an unexpected bit of poetry in 
what but for that would be merely "the apotheosis of the check 
and the chic,''' to repeat a low pleasantry of a very low song of 
a former day. It consoles one for seeing strewed about among 
these magnificences a few inexpressibly vulgar and childish 
ornaments such as an outrageous toy, — a moon-faced doll with 
an eyeglass and a tall hat, smoking a lighted cigarette, while a 
music box hidden in its body plays a vulgar air. Written below 
it, to the shame of those writers who first made use of the 
expression, are the words, "/>';/ de sieck.'^ What a mosaic is 
the taste of this race which takes everything pell-mell from our 
civilization, the excellent and the bad, our finest works of art 
and our most deplorable caricatures ! 

How do they recruit their numbers? By a single method 
and from a single class. In this respect, when we compare 
this summer Newport with our Deauville, or with Brighton on 
the other side of the Channel, there is a never-to-be-forgotten 
difference. There is here no upper class, as in England, no 
aristocratic Olympus whose customs are followed by all " tuft- 
hunters " — the picturesque word with which Oxford students 
banter those of their comrades who are trying to get into the 
smart set, hypnotized by the golden tassel that dangles from 
the caps of the students who belong to the nobility. There is 
not here as in France that irrational but potent survival of an 
ancient order in the very midst of a vigorous democracy, whose 
most expressive sign is without doubt our notion of the " club." 
With us the " circle " has ceased to be the natural, almost the 
necessary, sphere of those who keep up a certain style. It has 
come to be a sort of brevet, almost a rank, in an undetermined 
social regiment, the staff of which lives at the Union, the Jockey, 
or the Rue Royale. 

In America all men in society have been and still are busi- 



SOCIETY 55 

ness men. They were not born to social station ; they have 
achieved it. They did not find it ready made and handed 
over to them. They made it themselves, because it suited 
them to add such a refinement to their wealth, by way of cop- 
ing to their edifice. The result is a profound equality among 
them, a singular uniformity of habits, thought, tastes, which 
'speak their absolute similarity of origin.. The attempt has 
indeed been made, of late years, to break up this uniformity, 
to establish an artificial Olympus, that of the " four hundred," 
which are drawn from the families of oldest traditions and most 
wealth. This whim could not be carried out, because the true 
foundations of all these great fortunes are too recent, too well 
known ; and besides, they could not be kept up without a con- 
tinuance of the toil which produced them. Such a one became 
rich through the discovery of a gold mine twenty-five years ago. 
A railroad built in i860 made such a one a millionaire. Behind 
each of the names which appear in the newspaper reports of 
social functions, any American can see this or that factory, 
commercial house, bank, land speculation, and generally the 
factory is at full blast, the wickets of the commercial house and 
the bank are always open, the speculation is still going on. 
Democrats may say that such titles to a place in society are 
worth quite as much as a coat of arms crossed by bastardy or 
doubtful marriages, or a historic celebrity which has no coun- 
terpart in those that inherit it. Certain it is that the founda- 
tions of American society are frankly evident. Their immedi- 
ate results are no less so. 

First among them is the almost total absence of adventurers 
and adventuresses in a watering-place Hke Newport. It is easy 
to deceive a composite society, but not a society of business 
men. A family whose revenues are doubtful may make a figure 
in a circle where the authentic nobility must needs resort to 
expedients for its support, in which reigns that spirit of shifti- 
ness in money matters which is habitual with those who earn 



56 OUTRE-MER 

nothing. In America, every one knows wliat his neighbor is 
" worth," and besides, society hfe is here a hixury, while the 
minor daily expenses are so great as to be unsupportable by an 
ill-balanced budget. 

French novehsts since Balzac have often painted the type of 
the ambitious poor young man who keeps himself in the full 
current of high life by the superior management of very mod- 
est resources. Here a presentable evening suit costs a hun- 
dred and fifty dollars, — seven hundred and fifty francs, — a 
carriage to go to dinner costs three dollars, and five if you also 
return by carriage. A woman pays fifty per cent duty on the 
evening dress she brought from Paris. The New York dress- 
makers' and miUiners' bills come up to about the same figure. 
It is hardly an economy to have a seamstress in the house to 
copy the models of the great dressmakers, — that resource of 
the prudent Parisian woman, — in a place where a clever maid 
has forty dollars a month and a good dressmaker three dollars 
a day. This sort of abuse of wealth, not peculiar to Newport 
but found all over America, is at once a folly and a purifying 
process. We may rail at the frivolity of this existence, con- 
demn its extravagance. It may deserve many satires. It is at 
least very upright and very sound. 

(It is all that, in this summer sojourn ; witness the total 
suppression of the element which in Europe adorns and cor- 
rupts so many watering-places — I refer to the demi-monde.') 
As American society is principally drawn from business circles, 
the men have but little leisure. They are all absent several 
days in the week, occupied in making the money which it is 
the function of their wives to display. It follows that if they 
have relations outside of their own homes, they are not to be 
found here. Those who remain in Newport the whole week 
round are few m number, and for the most part old, smce they 
are " out of business," or very young and not yet in it. A few 
diplomatists on their vacation and a few flying visitors complete 



SOCIEIY 57 

the masculine part of society, the smallness of whose number 
would compel them to good conduct if, indeed, their inherited 
puritan morality, always present in a country of Anglo-Saxon 
traditions, — at least under the form of hypocrisy, — did not 
make all scandal impossible. 

For that matter, by what diplomatic processes would the 
most adroit member of the demi-monde succeed in brushing up 
against the real society, in offering a facile imitation of it, as 
with us, in a circle where all forms of pleasure are organized 
into a club and one must have an admission, a presentation, 
patronage, in order to take a cup of tea here, to play a 
game of tennis there? More than this, the race is not old 
enough for the courtesan to have become the petted but re- 
fined creature, scoffing and witty, who amuses a man and little 
by little makes her way into his daily intimacy. Simply to 
recognize how entirely she is absent from a city which elsewhere 
would be her favorite field of operation is to see that she is 
here reduced to the condition of a mere instrument of pleasure. 
Theo, who has lived ten years in the United States, said to me, — ' 

"Women are not necessary to America is as they are to us. / 
A man only goes with them here when he is slightly drunk and 
wants to keep it up." 

It is possible that the sentimentality which gives a touch of 
tenderness to gallantry in France is in certain respects more 
human. Socially the American is right ; I mean that the sharp 
line of demarcation between the women of his own circle and 
the others makes him look upon the former with quite other 
^■eyes. He respects them more in his imagination and in his 
iconduct. He may be a profligate ; he is never or very rarely 
la libertine. The distance between the two words is great. The 
proof is found in the conversation of young men at the clubs. 
They talk of sport, of play, of business, but the name of a 
woman is never uttered. 



58 OUTRE-MER 

The common origin of the social forces, if I may so call it, 
has also this result, that social life finds its end and aim in 
itself. All the families included in it being rich, and aspiring 
to nothing else to which it can help them, the result is that the 
atmosphere is more simple, happy, innocent, than any we know. 
There is less secrecy in personal relations, because they are not 
nor can be the means of self-advancement. The wealthy 
classes of America having no sort of influence over the elec- 
tions, an ambitious politician has no use for society. There is ; 
no Institute toward which the favor of a social set may advance ' 
a writer or an artist. Nor is there any group of salons whence ' 
literary reputations may radiate. It is only exceptionally that 
daughters are dowered, so that the number who seek fortune 
through marriage is limited to ruined foreigners of title, and 
these generally disappear after a season. They quickly dis- 
cover that old Europe is still the safest field for this sort of 
speculation. 

As on the other hand morals appear to be especially good and 
an acknowledged liaison is a phenomenon here, social life can- 
not serve as a screen for the complications of amatory experi- 
ence. Thus reduced to its true basis, social life turns its efforts 
into the line of public pageantry and outward display, and as it 
must always have a genuine aliment, a positive occupation for 
its vigorous activities, society life in this country tends to give 
itself up entirely to sport. Here, again, that which is essentially 
a fault becomes a source of health, so true it is that with strong 
races everything ministers to their strength, while among a 
decaying people even culture and refinement lead to nothing 
but disease and decay. 

How do they amuse themselves? That I might answer this 
question with some sort of correctness, I have amused myself 
with following, hour by hour, for several days together, the 
way in which those of the women who are what is called 



SOCIETY 59 

"leaders in society" employ their time. I transcribe one of 
the sketches I thus made, taking it at random from twenty 
others. They are all pretty much alike in respect of the 
powerful physique, which they take for granted, the fondness 
for the open air and exercise. This way of amusing them- 
selves explains why these women of the world, instead of 
having a ruined digestion, pale cheeks, "an old-glove air," — 
to quote a wicked humorist, — ■ like so many of their sisters in 
European capitals, still retain their brilliant complexions, 
their supple motions, their strong vitality. They know this, 
and are proud of it. 

"What pleases me in the fact that I am an American," said 
one of them, " is the thought that I belong to a fine, healthy 
race." 

I remember, too, with what contempt another, speaking of 
an actress of the Odeon, who was in New York for a month, 
described her as "That little woman with a wishy-washy 
complexion." They are inexhaustible in their criticisms of 
Parisian women. I remember that another of them, deplor- 
ing the change in one of her countrywomen recently married 
to a Frenchman, said, " She was so plump, with so good a com- 
plexion, and now she has become thin and quite sallow." 

They smile when thus speaking, with that gratified smile of 
theirs, so difificult for us to understand in its respectable ani- 
malism, with their polished teeth, in which the dentist has 
put bits of gold that shine so brightly as not to appear in the 
least like a blemish. 

The young woman whose striking image I now invoke was 
in the saddle before nine in the morning, after one of those 
hearty breakfasts which the Anglo-Saxons find necessary, the 
meal at which they gain strength for all the demands of the 
day. She has trotted and galloped for two hours in the salt 
air, returning at eleven, in time to change her gown and go 
to the Casino, where there is a tennis tournament. Two of 



60 OUTRE-MER 

her friends, a girl and a young woman two years married, are 
to take part in it. This is the fashionable place of meeting 
in Newport, — this square of turf framed in with buildin ;s 
of tasteful architecture, clothed in the temporary ivy of the 
Japanese vine. Around the players are gathered a concourse of 
women, for the most part in light-colored costumes, with that 
profusion of dainty ornament which makes their toilette as 
evidently perishable as costly. Their costumes look as if 
made to be worn a single hour, with nothing to individualize 
the beauty of the women who wear them. A saying recurs 
to my mind, in reference to this sort of impersonality of con- 
summate elegance, so delicate, so romantic, and which so 
well explains the difference between this sort of elegance and 
another sort. In one of those pen portraits with which people 
amuse themselves as a parlor game, a Frenchwoman wrote, 
describing her own character : — 

" I never dressed myself for a ball without knowing whom 
it was that I was going there to see." 

American women dress themselves that they may be beauti- 
ful, because they are "fine, healthy women," like others of 
their race, and at the present moment not one of them is 
thinking of exciting admiration, so absorbed are they in the 
game, in which the newcomers immediately become as much 
absorbed as the others. Trained by their "physical culture " 
lessons, they can judge of athletic feats wherever they see 
them, with an almost professional intelligence, just as in a pas- 
sage of arms a fencer measures with a single glance the quick- 
ness of the champions and their recovery. At one time one 
of the young men, who had just served a ball, held up his 
foot for an attendant to clean the mud from the rubber sole 
of his shoe. His attitude during this very commonplace 
action was so graceful that I heard a young girl exclaim : — 

"Oh, I hope he will win! He is so nice looking 1 " 

The artless expression betrayed the American woman's pro- 



SOCIETY 61 

found admiration of "looks," — physical beauty considered 
after a pagan sort of way. This admiration is carried to such 
a point that one of the most celebrated gymnasts of the 
United States invited a number of women of the best society 
to his private room, after one of his exhibitions, and gave 
them a lecture on muscular action, illustrating by his own 
person. The photograph of this torso, with muscles indeed 
like that of the Vatican over which the aged Michael Angelo 
passed his hands, is sold in all the shops, and more than one 
of these women who are now looking on at the tennis tourna- 
ment has it in her own sitting-room. 

"Some people think it is terribly indecent," said one of 
them, showing me this singular witness to the independence 
of her ideas. "I don't. It is just something Greek; that's 
all." 

Half-past twelve. — Tennis is over for to-day. The beauti-^ 
ful horsewoman of this morning, who has taken her rest by 
looking on at this game of strength and skill, breathing in the 
air like a great plant, has left the Casino for a yacht, where 
she will take luncheon. I see her get into her carriage, a 
very high due, take up the reins, and go off at the full 
speed of her horse, guiding him with her supple and firm 
little hands, bravely, deftly, in her elegant costume and her 
jewels. She is a "whip," as they say here, one of the five or 
six women who can best drive a coach, and to whom four 
horses offer no more terrors than this single chestnut. 

Half an hour later I find her in the electric launch which 
plies between her yacht and the wharf. The machinery of this 
frail bark has been improved after the invention of another 
yachtsman, the owner of one of the pleasure boats which I see 

anchored in the harbor. Th was speaking to me of the 

ignorance in which some of the children of the rich are brought 
up. If they have good minds, they gain by it the ability to 
retain the truly American gift of direct vision ; they see things 



62 OUTRE-MER 

and not the ideas of things. Furthermore, their ever-active hfe 
develops in them the virtue of an immediate relation with reahty. 
The number of yachts in this roadstead is a sufficient demon- 
stration of the degree to which the love of a life of activity and 
movement is a national characteristic. They form a little fleet, 
some of them almost as large as a transatlantic steamer, and 
capable of a cruise around the world, though that included 
the enormous ground swells of the Pacific and the heavy seas 
of Cape Horn. Others are small toys of ships equal to a 
voyage from Bar Harbor to New York if they keep close in- 
shore, doubling all the capes and entering all the creeks. And 
then there are sail-boats, decked cutters which remind me of 
the Bel- Ami, poor Maupassant's floating work-room. 

The one which we board is of medium dimensions, but fitted 
up with a magnificence which again gives me the impression of 
the want of restraint of this strange country. The sleeping-room, 
with its hangings of old rose damask and its furniture of white 
enamel ; the drawing-room, also in light colors decorated with 
plants and flowers, with its book-shelves, its piano, its deep arm- 
chairs, its ancient rugs, its water-colors by well-known artists ; 
the dining-room in its dark mahogany, with the table laid, on 
which the soft brilliancy of orchids mingles with the harsher 
brilliancy of crystal and silver ; the glazed upper saloon with its 
embroidered cushions on the wide sofas, where negroes are 
stationed banjo in hand ; finally the deck with its rocking-chairs 
set among palms, and an aviary of exotic birds with flashing 
wings, — all this represents an extreme attainment in luxury 
which touches upon the realm of fancy. 

Imagination looks backward twenty five — fifty years. It 
sees a pioneer plodding over the Western plains, a poor Irish- 
man landing in New York from an emigrant ship, a German 
seated at the desk of some hotel office. These were the 
fathers or grandfathers, or at most the great-grandfathers, of 
the company gathered here, already so accustomed to these. 



SOCIETY 63 

refined splendors thcit they are as much at their ease as princes 
of the blood. It takes generations to make a real nobleman, 
one who feels and acts as such. But a single generation 
suffices to make a man of high life who shall have all the easy 
assurance in the midst of elegance of one of the innumerable 
indolent lords who swarm in the clubs of London and Paris. 
Even half a generation is often enough. 

Half-past four. — Lunch, where again the inevitable dry 
champagne has flowed without stint, has given place to con- 
versation upon the deck. Other women have come, two girls 
alone, two others accompanied by two Yale students not even 
related to them, four or five bachelors, veritable citizens of 
Cosmopolis, spending their incomes between Paris, London, 
Cannes, and this corner of the world, whenever the care of their 
property recalls them to the United States. Already the elec- 
tric launch is beginning to carry passengers back to the shore. 
The whole " party " gathered on the boat is about to disperse. 
Most of them, and among them is the young woman whose day 
I am describing, are going to look on at a polo match. I am 
going with her. A quarter-hour upon the always-troubled 
waters of the harbor, twenty minutes in a carriage, and we are 
at the boarded enclosure in which this admirable and redoubt- 
able game is to be played. A side hill commands it, and a 
dense mass of people are gathered there with intent to see the 
match from the outside. This game is so national, its energy 
and danger are so well suited to the race, that humble working- 
women, washerwomen for example, begin their day at four 
o'clock in the morning that they may the sooner be through 
with their work and spend their afternoon here. 

" They are right," said the American who told me this fact. 
" It is a magnificent game. . . . Twenty years ago our young 
men thought of nothing but drinking. Now that they have cul- 
tivated a taste for sports, especially this one, they are obliged to 



64 OUTRE-MER 

be temperate so as not to grow stout. They eat little ; they do 
not drink ; they go to bed early. Without this regimen they 
could not keep it up a week at a time." 

The fact is that, once having set foot upon this green lawn 
and seen the two bands of players riding their horses at full 
speed, their bodies bent forward, their long wooden mallet bal- 
anced in the free hand, it is difficult to associate with drunk- 
enness or dissipation the enthusiasm such a virile exercise nec- 
essarily takes for granted. There are eight of them galloping 
along on fleet and nimble ponies. With their yellow boots, 
their knickerbockers, and their shirts and caps of the colors of 
their side, they follow in compact mass the white ball which 
rolls over the green turf. The horses, lathered with foam, follow 
it of their own accord, with the fine intelligence of an animal 
bestridden by a horseman so well trained that he seems like a 
part of his horse. 

The ball leaps forward under a blow of the mallet more 
accurate than the others, and the two bands are off on a gallop. 
They defile close in front of the line of carriages drawn up 
along the boundary. You hear the horseshoes pound along the 
trampled turf. The sound is at once muffled and clear, and ac- 
companied by the louder sound of their breathing. The same 
little shudder thrills through the lookers-on that they feel in Seville 
when watching the duel of the cuadrilla and the bull. Perhaps 
there is more real danger here, although the setting seems less 
ferocious. I was on the field only an hour, and in that time one 
of the riders had fallen from his horse. Another took his place, 
and ten minutes later received a blow of the mallet full in the 
face. I saw him fall from his horse blinded with blood. He 
fainted, then revived, and left the field supported by two friends, 
without attracting much attention from any one. The chief 
regret was the interruption of the game. 

The necessity of dressing for the evening offered some conso- 
lation. For this long day of comings and goings will close, like 



SOCIETY 65 

all the others, by a dinner party followed by a ball at the Casino 
or elsewhere : unless the open air and so mucli exercise have got 
the better of the fashionable woman. The fatigues of the day 
explain why evening receptions are so rare in Newport, with the 
exception of these balls. Dinner, parties break up at half-past 
ten or even earlier, the departing guests sometimes leaving their 
hosts so weary that they would feel some hesitation at remain- 
ing a quarter hour later. 

"It has often happened," said Miss L , the most beau- 
tiful " Honess " of this season, " that having ordered my carriage a 
little late I have remained in the dressing-room and gone to sleep 
upon a bench, so tired was I, rather than return to the drawing- 
room, knowing as I did that my poor hosts were tired too." 

How do they converse ? This is the last question and the most 
important which can be asked with regard to the men and 
women who constitute society. All the rest is only trappings 
and gesticulation : the art of conversation is society itself. 
When good, it is its best reason for being ; when bad, silly, and 
empty, it is its greatest weariness, and always, good or bad, its 
chief characteristic. But how describe the peculiar character 
of a conversation without setting down a whole series of real 
dialogues, which would be at once incoherent and in bad taste ? 
We must seek for its true tone in the romances of those writers 
who have known and loved society, and from this point of view 
Mr. Henry James's earlier novels appear to me to be the most 
trustworthy witnesses. I say his earlier ones, because this very 
acute observer has of late more particularly studied his com- 
patriots as they appear in foreign lands. Those on this side of 
the water find fault with him for this, and I recently read in a 
newspaper this astounding epigram, the metaphor being bor- 
rowed from the electric railway : — 

" He has so much talent it is to be regretted that his trolley 
does not run on an American wire ! " 

F 



66 OUTRE-MER 

None the less is it true that no one else has so accurately 
reproduced the distinguishing characteristics of conversation 
as heard in a drawing-room or at a dinner table in Boston or 
New York. 

As to the more strictly contemporary talk, that color of the 
present and the actual which Gyp so happily renders for us, it 
seems to me that no one has given a better idea of it than the 
distinguished woman who has made the pseudonym Julien 
Gordon famous. I refer to her novels the European reader, 
who, without crossing the ocean or leaving his easy-chair, may 
be curious to verify the few features which to my mind most 
distinctly mark American conversation. For Americans love 
to talk much more than the English, if not so much as the 
Gallo-Romans ; especially is this true of those in whose veins 
flow a few drops of that excitable Irish blood, which is no more 
able to be silent than to forget. 

The first of these features is somewhat hard to reduce to a 
formula. I venture one nevertheless, helping it out by com- 
ment. I call \t point of view. 

You converse with a Frenchman; if he is bright and ani- 
mated, after ten sentences the subject will have changed. 
He lets himself be carried along by the association of ideas 
so that in the course of an hour you will have touched on all 
subjects, without method, without profit, but with pleasure. 
He leaves you with the impression of an alert and ready 
mind which, to use correctly an old word that is very 
French, is illumined on many things. You have not felt that 
which nine times out of ten you will feel with an American 
man or woman, — an energy which never relapses even in the 
trivialities of social intercourse, a mind which has its own 
standpoint from which to look upon life, and which holds 
to it, compels you to accept it, utilizes you. 

This is because, under the outward semblance of the 



SOCIETY 67 

woman of the world who is talking with you in a drawing- 
room amid lights and flowers, there is a resolute creature 
who, from the time she came out, began to mould her own 
personality after some chosen model. Such a one has re- 
solved to be a great lady after the English type. She has 
lived much in London, and has had the wit to fit herself to 
her surroundings. You find it impossible to draw her away 
from this position, or to elicit from her any " references " 
that are not British and of London. A second is pleased 
to be a Parisian, and her conversation shuts you up in a 
round of ideas which forever and ever presuppose Paris. 
For her there is nothing but our books, our pictures, our 
plays, our actors. A third has taken it into her head to be 
an actress. She has taken lessons in elocution and speaks 
well. Her conversation turns wholly upon the theatre. A 
fourth is by way of being literary. Within a quarter of an 
hour you discover that in the midst of the whirlwind of 
society she had found time for a wide reading, and she keeps 
it up by talking to you with that singularly vigorous pre- 
cision and particularity with which people here are endowed. 
One of my French friends who was sought for as the husband 
of a very rich girl, renounced the half-formed engagement 
because the girl, being extremely interested in science, spent 
a whole evening in explaining to him a newly invented loco- 
motive. "I can't marry an engineer," was his only reply 
to the reproaches of the person who had introduced him 
to her. 

In general, it must be admitted, the point of view is less 
severe, less uncompromising, and you will find in the conver- 
sation of Americans, especially of the women, a second char- 
acteristic which saves them from stiffness and pedantry. 
This is vivacity. In their lightest words there is a distinct 
flavor of reality; there is also animation, action. Nothing 
abstract or vague; the words always make pictures, the terms 



6S OUTRE-MER 

always reveal experience. They have not in the slightest 
degree that motive of personal effacement which gives to 
manners their highest polish, but which robs conversation of 
so much individuality. They never hesitate to speak of them- 
selves, to tell of their journeys, their adventures, of what 
they call their "experiences." With little feeling for the 
spirit of words, they easily come thus to have what we may 
call the spirit of things, a picturesque speech which, when 
mingled with gaiety, produces an original and novel "humor." 
Here again, under the rich woman or the stately man, you 
feel "the people " close at hand. 

You feel it also in a certain general artlessness of conver- 
sation. Broad innuendo is absolutely absent from it, and 
scandal is seldom cruel. The imitation of aristocratic imper- 
tinence, that scourge of underbred society, finds no place 
here. Ridicule is incessant, but it is a ridicule that never 
wounds. It is carried on chiefly by lively anecdotes. Per- 
sonal characteristics are its principal object; after that social 
blunders, lack of taste in "lion-hunting," that is, the pursuit 
of celebrated or titled people. Anecdotes of this class gener- 
ally come from Europe, and go to prove that the usual result 
of the passage from the New to the Old World is not to cor- 
rect the faults of the American, but to make them more pro- 
nounced. At home, in his natural surroundings, he is more 
simple, more cordial. In short, hearing him talk you esteem 
him, you feel him to be "good-natured," to use his own ex- 
pression, without many dislikes or many desires, and easily 
amused. Forain said to me after a few days in Newport, 
"They are children." This sort of spirit seemed flavorless to 
that keen observer, who has entered so deeply into the old 
age of our decadence. It has a flavor, but so different from 
the Parisian acridity that it is perhaps impossible to taste 
them both. 

However, the Americans are doing their best in this line. 



SOCIETY 69 

They enjoy repeating this most admirable of Forain's stories, 
though with the same effort of understanding which they 
apply to the reading of Verlaine and Mallarm^. For 
another note of their conversation is a frequent reference 
to French writers of the extreme Left. This taste has reached 
even the women by the medium of the painters who have 
gone to Paris to study and have been pleased to enter into 
the current, make acquaintance with things. One of the 
unintended pleasures of conversation with these women is the 
amazing contrast between certain names and the lips that 
utter them, and that go on to apply to them with surprising 
frankness the same words, "lovely," "enchanting," "fascinat- 
ing," that equally describe all paintings and all natural land- 
scapes, a horse and a musical phrase, a bonnet and a statue. 

Two classes of subjects appear to me to be entirely excluded 
from conversation ; one is politics, the other religion. This 
silence is the more significant when we reflect that these 
are the two unfailing interests of America, and that in no 
country do political and religious life appear to be more 
intense. This phenomenon may be attributed to various 
causes. For my part, I see in it a proof that Americans pos- 
sess in a very high degree that distributive faculty which in 
itself is only a particular manifestation of their strength of 
will. You never hear a business man speak of business outside 
of his office. They excel in fixing the stopping-point. The 
same energy which permits them, having embarked in an un- 
dertaking, to give themselves entirely to it, permits them, the 
matter being finished, to give themselves with equal thorough- 
ness to a new one. They make a certain use of the verb " to 
have " which shows this. They say that they have a drive or 
a ride, as they would say that they have a bottle of wine 
to drink, a book to read. It is as if, a portion of the day 
being theirs, an hour, two, three hours, their first concern is 



70 OUTRE-MER 

to use it — to make the most of it, to make it an almost 
isolated whole. 

They no more mingle their sentiments than their occupa- 
tions. These are pigeonholes which they open and close at 
will. Politics is one of these pigeonholes, rehgion is another, 
society is a third ; and then, politics here are not, as with us, 
left a prey to the hazard of popular fancy or passion. They 
are ordered like any other business, and the parties are gov- 
erned by the " machine " in a way which permits no chimeras 
either of general ideas or of petty intrigues. As to religion, 
absolute freedom has so multiplied sects, and shades of dif- 
ference in the sects, that all discussion has come to be 
impossible. It would be a clashing of opinions so vast and 
continuous that as a natural consequence they have agreed to 
a mutual tolerance. This absence of the two great principles 
of irritation which exist in this world has resulted in giving 
conversation an air of harmlessness, almost of benignity, as of 
a most cordial simplicity. So, at least, it impresses me, for 
all these travelling impressions ought to carry with them the 
corrective of a " perhaps," since they can never be entirely 
verified even after a second, a third, or even a tenth experience. 



IV 

SOCIETY 

II. Wo?nen and Young Girls 

I HAVE a quantity of notes made in the course of months 
after those first ones, upon that American "society," of which 
at Newport I had at once the most complete and most striking 
experience. I have seen it again under all aspects, at Boston, 
at Chicago, at New York again, and at Washington. 

These notes were hastily set down day by day, like a paint- 
er's sketches, destined one day to be blended in some special 
final picture. I have run them over more than once, with the 
idea of classifying them, of summing them up in a few some- 
what clear statements. The difficulty which I have found in 
making such a synthesis arises less from their abundance than 
from a process of metamorphosis which my own mind has 
undergone in the course of this long journey and these many 
experiences. 

Just as the words "the United States" now translate them- 
selves for me by thousands of concrete and distinct pictures, 
while at my arrival they brought u]d l)efore me a confused and 
indeterminate mass, so these other words, " American Society," 
have ceased to express for me the unique thing of which I had 
a prevision at Newport. 

There is no American society as there is a French society 
and an English society. In the United States there are as 
many social systems as there are cities, and as not one of these 
cities has succeeded in establishing a supremacy of fashion like 

71 



72 OUTRE-MER 

that which Paris exercises over our provinces, it resuUs that 
there are all sorts of social centres, each one of which deserves 
a monograph. Certain novehsts are working in this field; 
among them I may cite Mr. Chatfield Taylor, to whom we 
already owe such curious sketches of fashionable Chicago ; and 
common speech itself furnishes proof of these differences in 
social circles, with the extravagances peculiar to proverbial 
expressions. How many times in the course of this journey 
have people said to me : — 

" In Boston they ask you what you know ; in New York, 
how much you are worth ; in Philadelphia, who your parents 
were ! " 



This epigrammatic remark is not entirely accurate. It 
seemed to me that in New York, for example, painters, 
sculptors, writers, and theatrical artists were assured of as 
cordial a welcome as in the ancient and learned citadel of 
Puritanism, — the "Hub" of Massachusetts. It remains none 
the less evident that the ardor for culture is more general and 
more intense in Boston, the mania for luxury more violent in 
New York, and that in Chicago there is more imitation, more 
uncertainty in the endeavor after the fitting. In that city I 
saw ladies rise from their seats in the theatre at the suggestion 
of one of their escorts, to visit an actor in the green room. 
But when a lady from New England who was with them in 
their box refused to join them in their incursion behind the 
scenes, they sat down again, their eyes betraying the thought, 
" So it is not proper ! " 

They long after Washington. " It is a delightful place," a 
lady said to me. " The men are not busy as they are here. 
They are in politics or something. They have plenty of time 
for afternoon teas ! " 

This abundance of time for five-o'clock teas does, in fact, 
give to the city on the banks of the Potomac something of the 
effect of Dresden or Weimar. Walking along these streets, with 



SOCIETY 73 

their border of private houses, with no suggestion of business 
or commerce, you might fancy yourself in some strasse of a 
German capital. And the easy flexibility of social life is in 
singular contrast with the overweighted condition of the other 
cities. I fancy that 'Frisco — as the contemptuous East insists 
upon calling San Francisco — has also its very distinct, very 
special, very original social circle ; and St. Louis also, and 
especially New Orleans. 

It results that the traveller has, after a little while, some diffi- 
culty in recovering the first impression of unity, which is yet 
the true one ; for these different " societies " are merely varie- 
ties of a single species, or as groups within a group. They 
have, at any rate, one trait in common, with regard to which 
it is so impossible to be mistaken, that the most superficial 
observers have remarked it no less than the most profound, 
the two weeks' tourist as much as a Bryce, or a Claudio 
Jeannet. All these forms of social life, however different they 
may be, are entirely, absolutely, the work of " woman." It is 
by woman and for women that these social circles exist, so that, 
in order to understand them in their birth and development, it 
is necessary first of all to study and understand the American 
woman. Such a task is difficult in any country : how much 
more when it has to do with creatures at once so complete and 
so complex, each one of whom has her own will, a small uni- 
verse of ideas, sentiments, ambitions ! 

At all hazards, here are a few reflections, a few sketches 
chosen from among a couple of hundred, as in some respects 
the most representative. 

A first problem forces itself upon you, — a historic problet 
the solution of which will, at least, explain how this supreme 
product of this civilization has been made. How does it come( 
to pass that the men of this country — so energetic, so strong- 
willed, so dominating — have permitted their wives to shake off 



74 OUTRE-MER 

masculine authority more completely than in any other part of 
the world? It would seem as if these sturdy conquerors, ac- 
customed to see everything bend before their daring and often 
their severity, would be more incapable than others of tolerat- 
ing in their homes a will, an energy, an activity, a personality 
in fact, equal to their own, existing by itself beside them and 
confronting them. 

The contrary fact appears, inscrutable, and, if social life 
is more closely observed, every slightest detail of manners 
makes it equally evident. Not a hotel, not a bank, not a 
public building, which has not its ladies' entrance by which 
they go in and out as independendy, as much a law to them- 
selves, as men can be. One of them enters those electric or 
cable cars which abound in the United States. The seats are 
all occupied, but nineteen times in twenty a man gets up to 
give his place to the newcomer, who accepts it without thanks, 
so entirely natural does the courtesy appear. If this rule has 
any exceptions, it is because certain women deem it a reproach 
and humiliation to be treated differently from men. That the 
young girls of the best famihes go out alone on foot, or in a 
carriage, is a social custom so well known that one would be 
ashamed to cite it, except for the sake of interpreting its mean- 
ing more accurately. This proof of their freedom of action is 
also a proof of the respect which men in America profess for 
them. A man who should too boldly stare at a woman who was 
alone would be so discredited that the most ill-bred person 
would not venture to do so. What do I say? He would not 
so much as think of it, so fixed is the habit of equality between 
the two sexes. 

This equality extends from small things to great. You visit 
a public school ; you will there see girls working with boys, and 
the teacher a man or a woman as it happens. You enter a 
laboratory of the university. There are young girls bending 
over the microscope side by side with the students. You 



SOCIETY 75 

permit the entrance of a reporter, who comes unannounced 
in the name of a great newspaper ; it is a woman who asks to 
interview you. You ask the address of a doctor ; you ascertain 
that there are as many women doctors as men, or if not as 
many, that they are so many as to cease to be exceptional. 
You go into the courts of law ; the secretary who draws up the 
warrants is a woman. There are women lawyers. There are 
women pastors in certain churches. x\t the head of a volume 
containing the census of the occupations of women in the 
United States, one of them, a poet of high standing, Julia Ward 
Howe, has placed this proud sentence. It explains better than 
whole commentaries that passion for activity which character- 
izes the claims of women in this country. 

" The theory that woman ought not to tvofk is a corruption 
of the old aristocratic system. ... A respect for labor is the 
foundation of a true democracy." 

Who can be surprised if creatures possessing this pride, 
this consciousness of individuality, having conquered the 
right of taking upon themselves occupations most foreign to 
their sex, reign uncontested in the realm most fit for them, — 
the management of social life? The very origin of the social 
life of America, as I have already pointed out, makes this 
necessary. In this country the women who belong to society 
have not, as with us, and in England, received a different 
education from those who are not of it. Their birth is not 
different; their family is not different; nor is their nature. 
They bring to it the same strength of resolution, the same 
power of realism, the same independence of personality. It 
remains to inquire why men permitted this independence to 
be born and to grow up. 

This phenomenon has complex reasons, as excellent ob- 
servers have pointed out. And first, it is precisely that fever 
of democracy, that idolatry of the doctrine of equality, which 
for a hundred years was one of the passions and the prides 



76 OUTRE-MER 

of the American. To this day, though in certain Eastern 
cities an invasion of old European prejudices has introduced 
a few pretensions which that Jacobin Stendhal energetically 
called the "aristocratic virus," this idolatry of equality re- 
mains very much alive in the middle class. I have seen a 
theatre audience spring up frantically at this word of a labor- 
ing man as he entered a liquor saloon : — 

" I am a freeborn American citizen, and I will go where 
I please." 

Such theories have their logic. The equality of the man 
and the woman was on similar terms. The religious sects have 
contributed to this end, by giving to woman the possibility 
of preaching like a man, and consequently of considering 
herself, and making herself to be considered, his equal in 
reason, eloquence, and authority. There are women in the 
origin of many of the religious confessions. Ann Lee founded 
the Shakers. Barbara Heck reformed the Methodists. Lu- 
cretia Mott gave their faith to the Hicksites, — to the 
"Friends," — who, like Tolstoi, preach "obedience to the 
light within." You will continually find in the newspapers 
notices like the following, which I copy from an Albany 
journal : — 

"The Rev. Anna H. S will address the men's mass 

meeting at German Hall, at four o'clock: no boys under six- 
teen admitted." 

Thus granted entrance to ofifices, women necessarily held in 
their homes a place which the conditions of the conquest of 
the vast continent contributed to make all the more impor- 
tant. Women were few in those frontier settlements which, 
advancing continually westward, marked the stages of the 
great democracy, in its progress from Atlantic to Pacific. 
They were most necessary to the maintenance of this half- 
savage life, in which men were called to struggle at once 
against nature and against men. Treated without sufficient 



SOCIETY 77 

consideration, the women could not have lived through it. 
They would have died, as Lincoln's mother did, seized with 
that mysterious prairie malady, that "milk sickness," which 
never yields its hold. It was necessary to be careful and con- 
siderate of them. 

A singular sort of chivalry is thus developed, the signs 
of which are found in the local character studies which the 
Americans are so fond of writing, setting on the stage, and 
playing. One type continually recurs in these pieces, that of 
the Westerner, rough and loyal, who chews, drinks, and talks 
a frightful dialect through his nose, but who, where a woman 
is concerned, is capable of the most remarkable flights of 
honor. I have nowhere found this singular hero better repre- 
sented than in Boston, in a comedy entitled In Mizzoura, 
and by an actor named Goodwin. This cross between a cow- 
boy and Don Quixote saved the life of a rival, who was on the 
point of being lynched by a mob. With his facetious and 
intent features, his tobacco distended cheek, his far-stream- 
ing jets of saliva, his harsh voice, his hat on the back of 
his head, and a sort of automatic passivity of manner, the 
comedian was the very incarnation of the sentimental and 
kindly countryman; and I found an amazing contrast between 
the applause with which the public greeted his generous deeds 
and the ease with which they accepted the idea of lynching. 
Both these things are a part of their customs. 

By all sorts of influences like these that special creation, 
the American woman, is elaborated. These are the roots by 
which the frivolous and capricious independence of the mil- 
lionaire's daughter sinks deep into the springs of the national 
life. In the strangely perplexing relations between American 
men and women there is a still deeper reason, at least so it 
appears to me, and one which is wholly physiological. But 
when we have to do with the laws which rule the mutual rela- 
tions of the sexes, we always have to come back to physiology. 



78 OUTRE-MER 

If, for example, the Orientals have reduced their women to 

a frightful state of slavery and degradation, it is because their 

-love for them is strongly sensual, and in all sensuality there 

is a basis of hatred, because there is a hidden taint of animal 

J. 

jealousy. If the Latin races, while according a greater liberty 

-to women, yet instinctively revolt from the idea of their inde- 
pendence and personal initiative, it is because, under all our 
refinements, we are a little like the Oriental. Sensuality and 
the despotism of jealousy are at the foundation. If, on the 
other hand, the English accord more liberty to their women, 
it is because climate, race, religion, have more tamed the 
ardor of their natures. The sera jiivenum Venus of Tacitus 
is as true of young Oxford men as it was of the young Ger- 
mans of the first century. All who have closely studied the 
young men of America will say, with one consent, that in this 
respect they are like young Englishmen, or still more cold. 

Merely to reflect upon the conditions under which the 
country has grown up, is to see that it must logically be thus. 
The incessant toil into which these men must have thrown 
themselves, in the effort to wrest the land from nature and 
from the Indians, the nervous tension due to the stress of 
competition, bad cooking, the absence of wine and the use of 
intoxicating liquors, religious fervor and political ardor, and 
a score of other causes, have checked the development of this 
people on the side of the senses. Art and literature are recent 
things ; neither, then, has the emotional imagination been 
fed. A trifling fact is singularly significant. I am assured 
that in all the United States there is not an entirely nude 
statue. Only yesterday the Bostonians, so cultured, so lib- 
eral, so in love with art, refused to accept for the fagade of 
the Public Library two children done by the powerful sculptor 
St. Gaudens, because they were not clothed ! The munici- 
pality of Chicago forced another sculptor to put clothes upon a 
Hebe designed for a fountain, which he had left undraped. 



SOCIETY 79 

These circumstances combined have brought about this 
result, that woman's charms have been given the second place 
in the interest of men. This sense of charm, though lulled to 
indifference, has become neither morbid nor unhappy ! That 
species of cruelty which grows out of too great desire is 
the true principle of the great inequalities of legislation in 
which was manifested the secret desire of the male in defi- 
ance of the female. In American sensibility, it simply does 
not exist. It even seems as if this relative diminution in the 
prominence given to the life of the senses has modified — 
only slightly indeed, but none the less truly — the difference 
of appearance between the two sexes. 

I remember that at Cambridge, visiting the "Hasty Pud- 
ding," one of the students' clubs, where they give amateur 
theatricals, I had an opportunity to examine the photographs 
of those of the young men who had taken women's parts and 
wore their dress. There was a surprising similarity — almost 
identity, indeed — between these portraits and those of their 
sisters or cousins, tall girls, with narrow chests, falling shoul- 
ders, straight backs, who have practised gymnastics and " high- 
kicking," who can lift their foot as high as their head, and 
jump from their own height without injury. It seems as if 
the type of manhood, while taking on a finer nervous organi- 
zation, had lost something of its primitive weight, and, on 
the other hand, that the type of womanhood, vigorous, ener- 
getic, and impulsive, had taken on a more resolute charm, 
firmer, less voluptuous, and delicately masculine. 

These are but suggestions, but they help to a better under- 
standing of what makes, not the whole of a people, but its 
real and permanent basis, — the physical existence of the race. 
And though the social life be luxurious, artificial, and over- 
loaded, such a race gives a basis of reality to the nation, or, 
to make a more accurate comparison, it is the web upon which 
may be embroidered the flowers of life. 



80 OUTRE-MER 

This apotheosis of woman, which is the most characteristic 
feature of "society" in America, is in the first place and espe- 
cially the apotheosis of the young girl. The words are simple, 
yet they need to be explained ; for it is probable that on 
every point — except indeed that of honor — they express pre- 
cisely the contrary in the United States and France. 

That which first strikes the foreigner, who has heard so much 
about American girls, is the absolute impossibility of distin- 
guishing them from the young married women. The much- 
commented fact that they go in and out entirely unattended 
does not sufificiently account for this perplexity. Their identity 
is much deeper than that. They dress in the same way, wear 
the same jewels, have the same freedom of speech and of 
smile, they read the same books, do the same things, possess 
the same full-blown beauty, and,. thanks to the invention of the 
" chaperon," there is no theatre, or supper party, or tea 
where they cannot be present all by themselves upon the invita- 
tion of any man of their acquaintance. The character of this 
official surveillance may be estimated by the companion fact 
that the young girl, in whose honor the "bachelor" gets up a 
party, usually chooses the chaperon herself. The younger the 
chaperon, the better she suits. The young widow and the 
" grass-widow," whether separated, divorced, or simply apart 
from her husband for the time being, is an ideal person for this 
duty. It may also be said that the young girls whom you see 
around a table at Delmonico's, in company with these young 
men and the said chaperon, are as much at liberty as if they 
had no one to answer for them but themselves. 

This habit of unchecked self-government is manifest in the 
singular serenity of their countenances. One of the most 
charming men in New York, a poet of reputation, conceived 
the clever idea of making a collection of miniatures in 
which, with their permission, should be included all the noted 
beauties of the city. I remember that when I passed a mag- 



SOCIETY 81 

nifying-glass over the glass behind which smiled a hundred 
refined and inscrutable faces, I sought in vain to distinguish 
those who were married, and I could not. What more, indeed, 
can marriage bring a girl when it comes ? Duty ; a husband to 
submit to, children to bring up, a house to look after. The 
young girl feels the weight of none of these chains to-day. 
She knows it, and that she is enjoying her best days. Once 
married she will not have one whit more freedom, and she 
will have fewer opportunities to amuse herself Therefore, 
more often than not, she will marry late. If it is not entirely 
the end of things for her, as for the young man in Paris who 
decides to give up his bachelor life, it is the entering-wedge of 
abdication. And many of them do not shut their eyes to this 
fact. 

" We must amuse ourselves before marriage," one of them 
said to me, with a smile. " Who knows what will come after- 
ward?" 

The divorce cases reported from time to time in the news- 
papers prove this young woman's good sense to be equal to her 
beauty. For my part, after having closely studied human con- 
ditions in Europe and here, I think that a young man from 
twenty to twenty-five has the best chance of happiness by being 
an Englishman of good family, studying at Oxford ; and a young 
girl by being born an American, of a father who has made a 
fortune in mines, railroads, or land speculations, entering New 
York or Washington society under good auspices. 

At the first glance this absolute freedom makes all the young 
girls look alike. They are the model after whom many authors 
— some of them very distinguished, but none of whom has 
taken the trouble to come here — have composed the type 
which has become classical with us, — the American woman of 
the romance and the th^tre. Our writers manufacture her of 
the simplest possible materials, — very bad manners upon a 
background of simplicity ; there you have the walking doll. 

G 



82 OUTRE-MER 

Nevertheless, it is only a doll, and the two elements of which 
it was made appear to me to be equally false. 

The American girl, when we see her in France, may often 
appear to us ill-bred, because we compare her with our own 
conventional type of young girl, which, let me whisper, is not 
very close to the truth either. Seen near at hand and in her 
own home, you are better able to understand that this freedom of 
action may quite as probably be associated with a good, as with a 
bad, education. After a very few weeks, you learn to distinguish 
quite clearly between those who are " fast," as they say, and 
those who are not ; between her who takes pleasure in arousing 
the interest and awakening the desire of a man and her with 
whom moral famiharity is impossible, still less physical familiarity. 

As for simplicity, when we Frenchmen apply the word to 
young girls we always take it for granted that there is only one 
question in the world for them, — that of love. We implicitly 
admit that that is the essential fact of their existence, as of all 
women's existence. We ask ourselves, what they think about it, 
what they know about it, and our measure of their innocence, of 
their virginity of soul, if I may so speak, is entirely based upon 
the answer. It is always understood that their acquaintance 
with the things of real life accords with this single answer. Such 
a test is not applicable to the American girl, because with her 
as with the American man of from twenty to thirty years, the 
question of love is relegated to the background. The question 
whether or not she will be married in accordance with the 
desires of her heart, whether or not her life will be a love 
story, has very often not the slightest place in a girl's thoughts. 
Even for those who seem the most intent on pleasing, and who 
make the most of their personal attractions, — there are fewer of 
them than Frenchmen suppose, more of them than Americans 
will admit, — it is still true that nine times out of ten their rela- 
tions with a man are merely a fact of social Hfe. It is simply 
a way of gratifying their self-love, of becoming what the news- 



SOCIETY 83 

papers call "Prominent people in society" by the number of 
their adorers. This love of admiration has not the danger 
here that it would have elsewhere, because, on the one hand, of 
the reserve of men in America ; on the other, of the girl's 
thorough understanding of the masculine character. They 
began at so early an age to be on intimate terms with men, 
that, so far as they are concerned, they are in the position of 
the children of a circus rider with horses. One girl, speaking 
to me of a common acquaintance, a Spanish woman married 
in Rome and very unhappy, said : — 

" She does not know how to manage her husband." 

And she told me how this woman's rival had gone to work 
to attract and retain her unfaithful husband. The sort of intel- 
ligent innocence which such remarks take for granted is not 
very intelligible to us. A diplomat who spent several years 
here, and to whom I repeated this conversation by way of 
ascertaining its precise import, summed up his own impression 
of them — which is severe — in the words, " They have a chaste 
depravity." He supported his epigram by anecdotes con- 
cerning " engagements," as they say here. 

" I have known," he said, " many young girls engaged to 
men whom they had not the slightest intention of marrying. 
They liked them as lovers, but they did not want them as hus- 
bands. I have known others who for months have kept secret 
a serious engagement, in order to retain the attentions which 
are denied to an 'engaged girl.' A girl's engagement is, nine 
times out of ten, what an interesting situation is to a wife, — 
something to be concealed as long as possible, and admitted 
only when it can be concealed no longer." 

For my part, I see in these httle facts, which I have reason 
to believe true, nothing which proves either profligacy or per- 
versity. They are a sign that the American girl is, before all 
things, a reasoning creature, fitted both by nature and educa- 
tion for self-guidance. 



84 OUTRE-MER 

"What is the matter with you?" one of my compatriots, 
who had stopped in New York on his way to Chicago, asked 
one of these young girls. He had sat beside her at two suc- 
cessive dinners, and had found her very singular the second 
time ; quite different from the evening before. 

" I am a little nervous," she replied. " Some one came to 
see me at five o'clock, and acted in a way I don't like. I shall 
be obliged to give up my flirtation with him and I am sorry. 
He is such a bright fellow ! " 

How shall I translate this word " bright," to which the 
Americans give so much of meaning, to which they add so much 
of quick adaptability and effective power ? How, also, shall I 
understand the mental processes of a modest girl who extends 
such confidences to an acquaintance of yesterday? Frankness 
hke this appears to me precisely a proof of a simplicity which 
we are ill-fitted to understand. To recur to the comparison 
lately used, I am sure this child attached little more importance 
to the " bright fellow's " lack of breeding, than she would have 
attached to the stumbling of a pony which she had " badly 
managed." He has broken' his knees and can't be used again. 
What a pity ! " He was such a bright pony ! " A girl who, 
corrupt or impassioned, would attach an extreme importance to 
love matters, either does not speak of them or speaks in another 
tone. 

Precisely because the American girl's imagination does not 
play around sentimental problems, she has far more shades of 
variety in her character than her compeers in Europe. The 
latter do not expect their true development until their heart 
has spoken, and the influence of a man has begun to mould 
them. The American girl exists by herself. She knows it and 
wifls it so. She is proud of it. She has nothing in common 
with the Galatea of the pagan myth who receives all from Pyg- 
malion, from the embodiment of her beauty to the fire of her 
soul. Her individuality is already complete when she arrives 



SOCIETY 85 

at marriage — at the latest possible moment, as I have already 
said, if her parents have ever so little fortune. She proposes 
to choose a husband who will take the place of these convenient 
parents, in the matter of indulgence and also of wealth. She 
only half counts upon the generosity of her father, who is not 
obliged to dower her, and who, once she is married, may reduce 
her allowance to an absurd figure. One girl, a blonde with 
great half-mocking blue eyes, — blue eyes which are both 
tender and tantalizing, and a delicately-formed nose, at once 
sensitive and scornful, told me between smiles that showed 
beautiful teeth, in which there was not a speck of gold : — 

" Mamma says that love is like a toothache. So far I have 
no need of a dentist. I shall never marry any but a rich, a 
very rich, man. The rest may come as it may, or not at all. 
At this moment I have a suitor who is worth five millions. So 
there is no hurry." 

And then she added, thoughtfully : — 

" I should like, above all things, to be a widow. I have 
always thought how nice it would be to lose my husband on 
my wedding-day. I should have less reason to mourn as I 
should know him less. I should like to see him struck with 
lightning as we come out of the church. It is so nice to be a 
young widow ! " 

This lively little creature — she was nineteen years old, — 
libelled herself with all the charm of a witty girl posing before a 
French novelist, " French novelist," the two words have always 
had a vague aroma of scandal here. But her paradox only lent 
weight to her real thought ; namely, that she would do well to take 
time before she bartered her present lot for one more uncertain 
and more dangerous. Many of her companions think as she does. 
It is for this reason that they willingly remain single till they are 
twenty-five or twenty-six years old, and in these long years of 
unchecked independence, each one follows her own tastes, each 
her own fancy, her own nature, indeed, oppressed by so Httle 



86 OUTRE-MER 

constraint. Hence it results that the individuality of each 
nature is amply developed. Innumerable types also work 
themselves out, which a traveller of a few months' experience 
is utterly unable to distinguish in even the most general way. 
Those which I am about to sketch are, perhaps, not the most 
happily chosen. They have at least the merit of having been 
studied from life. 

The most artless of these young-girl types, and to my mind 
the most touching, for reasons which I will explain, is the 
Beauty. There are two or three in every city, and their suprem- 
acy is so well recognized that you are continually receiving 
such invitations as " Pray come to tea to-morrow afternoon, to 

meet Miss , the Richmond beauty." I say Richmond at 

random ; in its place put Savannah, Charleston, Albany, Provi- 
dence, any city north or south that you please. To merit her 
title, the Beauty must indeed be lovely with that radiant bright- 
ness which extinguishes all other women at a ball, a dinner, or 
the theatre. She must be very tall, very well formed, the hnes of 
her face and figure must lend themselves to that sort of repro- 
duction of which the newspapers and their readers are so fond. 
She must also know how to dress with magnificence, which here 
is inseparable from elegance. 

Once recognized, though she may not be more than twenty 
years old, she enters upon a sort of ofiicial, almost a civic, ex- 
istence. In the newspaper columns devoted to " Social Gossip," 
the types spontaneously form her name, so often have the com- 
positors set it up. She is as necessary a part of every grand 
dinner and ball as the roses at a dollar apiece, and the cham- 
pagne brut. Her own city cannot suffice to her, or, rather, she 
would not be fulfilling her mission if she did not represent that 
city in New York, Washington, Newport, at the races, the 
regattas, all the events where, as on a stage, American society 
displays itself. She is, in fact, a social actress and a champion 



SOCIETY 87 

of her order, like a master of billiards or chess. Let us be more 
ambitious, — like a pugilist, like Jim Corbett the Californian ! 

For her successes to be perfect, she must compete for her 
place "abroad," and play her part as leading social lady in 
Paris, London, Rome. When she returns from Europe with 
her crop of laurels, she still does not lay down her arms. She 
has a record to hold, and the day when she shall be assuredly, 
incontestably, excelled by a rival, it will be with her as with the 
Boston boxer, the hapless J. L. Sullivan, who no longer counts 
since he has been once beaten, — as with the Teutonic and 
the Majestic since the Campania has made the passage from 
Europe in five days sixteen hours and a few minutes. It is all 
over — they belong to the past. 

Behind the Beauty, to keep up the insane expenses of a life 
always in full dress, in the most senselessly luxurious circle in 
the two hemispheres, is a father who most likely is never seen, 
who divides his life between his office, his club, and sometimes, 
in certain cities, the bar of the best hotel. His daughter, to 
whom he makes an allowance which would suffice for the 
trousseau of a princess, is dear to him by a complex senti- 
ment into which enters less of affection than of pride. He 
sometimes passes entire seasons, not to say years, without see- 
ing her when she crosses the ocean. Even when she is in the 
United States and at home, the meals which he takes with her 
could be counted. Nevertheless he loves her, but by such a 
displacement, such a projection of his personahty as Balzac 
described, with the blemish of his habitual extravagance, when 
he pictured the friendship of Vautrin for Lucien de Rubempre. 

" He was myself, young, and brilliant," said the convict. 
" From the depths of my cell I put on his coat. I drove 
in his tilbury ; I entered drawing-rooms with him." 

Probably the business man, laboring over railway plans and 
manufacturing projects, accompanies his daughter by a similar 
imagination. His money goes about in this young girl ; that is 



88 OUTRE-MER 

to say, his will, his labor, all that is most personal to himself. 
Whether he marries her to some noble Italian, Englishman, or 
Frenchman, or whether he refuses her to the nobleman, — the 
American father's vanity may take on either of these forms, — 
she serves to prove to him his power. He has this daughter just 
as he has a twenty-story "building" which bears his name, a 
picture gallery mentioned in the guide-books, as he has his 
stocks. " I know my social value," said one of these girls. 
She spoke of herself as of a certificate of New York Central, or 
Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy stock. Social value, — this is 
, probably the best definition of this singular creature, whose 
i existence consists — in the heart of a democracy — in under- 
going as much representative etiquette as if she were maid of 
honor to a princess, or herself a princess in a court that was 
always making festival. Speaking of one of these girls, whose 
health was failing in the midst of her social victories, and who 
has since died of them, a very acute woman dropped this 
word, to which I shall add nothing, so perfectly does it seem 
to me to express that which must be the last calamity of such 
a lot : — 

" I always longed to condole with her upon her toilettes ! " 

A second type, less rare than the professional beauty, but 
still less common than many others, is the young girl with 
ideas. This class may be divided into two groups, — the 
convmced girl and the ambitious girl. Like the Beauty, this 
girl lives in society with that sort of extravagance so difficult 
to avoid in America. She also figures in the daily procession 
of the fashionable carnival ; only she is not, like the other, 
at the head of the procession. She has not attained to this 
incontestable and somewhat mechanical success. For that 
matter, she does not desire it. She is a girl who has laid 
down for herself a special programme, and is occupied in car- 
rying it out with a regularity and perseverance that she allows 



SOCIETY 89 

nothing to interrupt. Sometimes tliis is the case of the con- 
vinced girl. This programme is in the purely moral order, 
and of a very high type. For example, she has said to herself 
that marriage being a contract, the man ought to bring to it 
the same loyalty as the woman, the same pure past, the same 
innocence ; and that she will not engage herself to any one who 
has more past experience than she herself. This puritan rigor 
of conscience would seem strange in a setting of such frivolity, 
if you did not recall to mind that a never-failing current of 
religious ardor flows in the veins of these descendants of the 
exiles of the Mavflozver or the companions of Penn. 

Or, again, the girl with ideas decides to take part in pohtics. 
For this two things are required, — that some person nearly 
connected with her shall hold some high position or be working 
to that end ; and that she herself have time to direct or aid 
that person ; she also is working for that. Such is the thor- 
oughly American peculiarity of her character. She is a realist 
and insists upon having the reality of that power of which she 
will have the semblance, through a father, a brother, a husband. 
She strains every nerve to make the two former senators, mem- 
bers of Congress, ambassadors ; she will endure the same toils 
to enable the latter to occupy a similar situation, perhaps to 
bring him to the White House ; and at the same time she 
labors that she may be, when the time arrives, a perfect instru- 
ment for the service of this ambassador or president, making 
herself familiar with politics and administration, attending the 
sessions of legislatures, watching the workings of the electoral 
machine, following the complications of the European chess- 
board. 

Such a one is both earnest and ambitious. There is another 
type that is ambitious only. This girl has made up her mind 
that her name shall be written in the golden book of the Eng- 
lish peerage, that she will marry a lord. For many years she 
has been preparing herself for this, losing no opportunity of 



90 outre-mi:r 

gaining entrance to the upper circles of English society, mean- 
while occupying herself with overcoming the obstinacy of her 
father, whose opposition to international marriages is a matter 
of principle, — o{ jingoism, to use the Anglo-Saxon equivalent 
of our French chauvinisine, — and also a matter of judgment. 
So many of these unions have turned out badly ! None the 
less, the young girl will succeed at last in joining the small pha- 
lanx of American peeresses ; the nervous tension of her expres- 
sion is my warrant for that, and so is the decided curve of her 
hps, with the vigorous little chin. And once having attained 
to the British Olympus, she will need to be taught nothing 
either of people or of customs — she, whose grandfather began 
life in a Httle restaurant in Chicago, before the fire ! 

An ambitious girl who is less gifted, especially if she is 
less rich, cheerfully becomes a "bluffer," to borrow once 
again a significant term of the national game of poker. She 
went to Europe last year with the idea well fixed in her pretty 
brown head to play the same game with some rich man oi^er 
there that so many European adventurers have come over 
here to play upon rich girls. What could be fairer? She 
knows that her father's fortune will not endure investigation, 
and she knows, too, that every one else knows it and that the 
brilliant parties given in their mansion on Fifth Avenue 
deceive no one. The "bluffer" has told herself that her 
beauty will make a sensation in London and Paris; that she 
will easily turn some simple head; that her would-be husband 
will take her luxurious life, her fine clothes, above all, the 
fact that she is an American girl abroad, as authentic wit- 
nesses of millions. She has had before he illustrious examples 
of successful bluffs of this sort. Unluckily, she has chanced 
upon a young man who, though very elegant and well-con- 
nected, has come to the end of his own resources, and being 
reduced to expedients has resolved to "bluff" some rich 
foreigner. The two actors are mutually deceived, and the 



SOCIETY 91 

young man, coming to New York to press his suit, has 
departed, after explanations which must have been most 
deliciously amusing! Unhappily, comedies of this kind 
are played without spectators. 

Another character more frequently assumed is that of the 
tomboy. She has generally been to Europe — for that 
matter you must always ask this question with regard to every 
American girl. She there became conscious of her individu- 
ality, as a philosopher might say. She knows that she is 
"the American girl," and she wants to be even more so than 
she is. She makes game of you in her own character by 
exaggerating it beyond all bounds of probability. She will 
tell you how, in Paris, in the Rue de la Paix, a gentleman took 
her for what she was not and followed her. She found the 
adventure "great fun." 

You feel it incumbent upon you to excuse the indiscretion 
of your compatriot? 

"Stupid thing 1" she replies; "he didn't so much as speak 
to me." 

This is the girl who opens her doors to a class in "high- 
kicking," the art of lifting one's foot as high as possible. 
She holds the record of six feet three inches, none of her 
friends having been able to excel her. 

"What a pity that you can't see me kick! " she says to you: 
"without bending the knee, you know." 

This is the girl who, dining with a young married friend, 
without her mother, asks you for cigarettes, smokes four at a 
time, — and exclaims: — 

"To think that I have to come to Jessie's to get a few puffs 
of straight-cut." 

She has the street-Arab in her make-up, but the American 
street- Arab; not Gavroche, but Gallegher. I refer the reader 
to Mr. Richard Harding Davis's clever story, that he may ap- 
preciate the difference between the innocence of Parisian and 



92 OUTRE-MER 

the coarseness of Americiii blackguardism. Compare one 
of their pantomimes with one of our street singers. The 
American girl when she undertakes to be masculine is discon- 
certingly daring in her speech. 

"What do you think of the little trousers with which the 
virtuous women of Philadelphia and Baltimore have clothed 
their statues? " 

I saw one of my French friends start at this question sud- 
denly put to him in a drawing-room of virtuous New England. 
Another of them found himself growing interested in one of 
the innumerable Mays whom you meet at all the balls and 
afternoon teas. One of May's friends — it happened to be 
the smoker of cigarettes — said to him saucily: — 

"Well, when is the marriage coming off? She is very 
nice, you know, very nice ! It is a pity that she has nothing 
pretty but her face. Yes," she went on teasingly; "we slept 
in the same room a whole week in the country," and a 
minute description followed — "hollow chest, projecting 
shoulder-blades, thin legs, no hips — nothing but hair — hair 
— up to there." 

And she bends her leg and points to the bend of her knee 
with her mocking laugh like a schoolboy who should describe 
to you some creature whom he had met on the Boulevard 
Saint-Michel on a holiday evening. 

Another, feeling bored one evening at a formal dinner, 
wrote a few lines on the back of her menu, folded the card, 
and sent it to an officer of our marine on his way to Chicago, 
whom she had known just three days. 

"I love you," she wrote. "What more will you have?" 
She went into fits of laughter over the expression of the 
man's countenance at the absurd joke of this make-believe 
declaration. 

Another, invited to tea by Miss May's lover, and not suc- 
ceeding in getting her mother's permission, wrote to him. 



SOCIETY 93 

"If I were a French girl they couldn't treat me worse. That 
is all the good it does to be an American," and then by way 
of postscript, "You know that if you insist, I will come all 
the same." And this was not a mere mode of speech. 

The tomboy is a sort of young woman who in general excels 
in all sports, wears tailor-made gowns, walks erect, plays 
billiards, and finds much less pleasure in being courted than 
in devising some new excitement, such as a ride at full speed 
on the cow-catcher of a locomotive. I have met the daughter 
of a director of a great railway, of whom this was the favorite 
amusement. She had covered miles upon miles of the prairie 
— squatting on the metal platform above which puffed the 
machine, and by the expression with which she exclaimed 
"How exciting!" I could see how her nerves must have 
thrilled with the rush of speed and danger. 

This is the physical tomboy, if one may so speak, in con- 
trast with whom arises the more serious face of the intellec- 
tual tomboy; the girl who is up to the times, who has read 
everything, understood everything, not superficially, but 
really, with an energy of culture that could put to shame the 
whole Parisian fraternity of letters. The trouble is that nine 
times out of ten this mind, which is capable of assimilating 
everything, is incapable of tasting anything. It is an iron 
stomach, like that of Didymus, the commentator of the deca- 
dence, whom the Alexandrians called the Scoliast, with entrails 
of brass — with no palate. Though like all the others she gets 
her gowns from the best houses of the Rue de la Paix, there 
is not a book of Darwin, Huxley, Spencer, Renan, Taine, 
which she has not studied, not a painter or sculptor of whose 
works she could not compile a catalogue, not a school of 
poetry or romance of which she does not know the principles. 
She subscribes impartially to the Revue des Deux Mondes and 
the gazettes of the latest coteries of the Latin Quarter or 
Montmartre. Only she does not distinguish between them. 



94 OUTRE-MER 

She has not an idea that is not exact, and yet she gives you 
the strange impression as if she had none. One would say 
that she had ordered her intellect somewhere, as we would 
order a piece of furniture, to measure, and with as many 
compartments as there are branches of human knowledge. 
She acquires them only that she may put them into these 
drawers. This is the most striking illustration of the misdi- 
rected effort from which this civilization suffers, and the proof 
that effort can replace nature only to a certain point,. I 
remember that as we were leaving the palace of one of the 
Chicago millionaires, Forain said to me in a voice fairly 
quivering with the frantic longing of a sensitive artist for a 
glimpse of simple human nature : — 

"Oh, for a concierge's lodge! What would I give to see a 
concierge's lodge ! " 

Before the intellectual girl one longs to cry : — 

"Oh, for one ignorance, one error, just a single one. May 
she make a blunder, may she prove not to know ! " 

In vain. A mmd may be mistaken, a mind may be igno- 
rant, but never a thinking-machine ! 

A new type now comes into view, that of the coquette, for 
she too exists — the feminine and compliant coquette, who is 
somewhat like what we know in Europe, though with decided 
shades of difference. 

First there is the collector, she whose wiles are exercised 
upon several persons at a time, usually four, for a variety in 
jealousies, — two somewhat elderly adorers, and two very young 
ones. In a parenthesis I may observe that it is a striking char- 
acteristic of the United States that a man's age appears not to 
have the same importance to the American as to the French 
girl. Arnolphe need not here envy Horace the charm of his 
twenty-five years, so far as Agnes is concerned. The proof is 
the readiness of young girls to marry rich old men, and the 
usual happiness of such unions. 



SOCIETY 95 

My diplomatic friend insists that calmness of temperament 
alone explains this anomaly. This hypothesis is scarcely to be 
reconciled on the other hand with that admiration of "looks," 
of the physical beauty of man, which, on its part, explains 
certain elopements of which the papers occasionally speak. I 
think it more correct to recognize that an American woman's 
love of admiration is no more than other things a matter of 
impulse. Will is her guide here too, and leads her to as much 
satisfaction in turning an old head as a young one. The proof 
of this element of intention is found in her way of going to 
work. She almost always uses compliment, but so obvious, so 
terribly downright, that you know not how to take it. It is a 
way of asking you for as much in exchange which, those say 
who know, you may make as extravagant as you like. They 
will not believe much that you say, but they will like it. 

" I do love the French so ! " said one woman in my pres- 
ence. " They know so well how to pay compliments ! They 
go at it in such a way that you believe that they really mean 
it." And they readily add: "Write to me. Tell me what 
you think of me. " 

It is this admiring interest that the "collector" desires to 
arouse and keep alive. It is enough for her; she is always 
ready enough to be displeased if the correspondence thus sug- 
gested should go so far as a declaration, or if this admiring 
interest became bold enough to risk a caress — unless indeed 
the "collector" herself becomes equally interested. For, 
unhappily, my friends assure me, there is a type of young girl 
who still is modest, who yet permits herself to receive trinkets, 
jewels, even pairs of horses, from the admirers whom she 
keeps on a footing of Platonism ! She does not go often so 
far, but contents herself with summer flirtations with men 
who are rich enough to give her the use of their carriages 
during the season. 

This singular variety, this virgin nature which remains pure 



% OUTRE-MER 

by calculation, while still taking advantage of her beauty for 
the benefit of her own whims, appears less odious here than 
elsewhere. 

The financial relations of man and wife are very singular in 
this country, where the wife most frequently bears to her hus- 
band the relation of disbursing agent, hardly ever seeing him, 
receiving from him a profusion of money, which she lavishes 
by herself alone upon luxuries which her husband never 
enjoys. He is never there, unless in the form of checks! 

The species, happily, is rare, so rare that I speak of it only 
by hearsay, while, on the other hand, I have often met the 
sentimental coquette, her who has the excuse of believing her- 
self to be "desperately in love " with the man with whom she 
flirts. The extravagant speech, so characteristic of America, 
makes use of such expressions to designate the mild passion- 
ettes, which are at least so far original that they are indulged 
in by these romantic persons with a self-possession in which 
all the energy of the race is revealed. When the American 
girl has been attracted by a young man, she does not content 
herself, as our schoolgirls do, with timidly dreaming about 
him. She always has some obliging friend whom she de- 
spatches to him. 

" Miss N is very anxious to make your acquaintance. 

Come, and T will present you to her." It is regularly another 
girl who thus plays the part of go-between. She goes farther. 
"Why don't you pay attention to Nannie? She is charming, 
I assure you. I think you would please her." 

She doesn't think it — she knows it; for Nannie has made 
her her confidante and entrusted her with this message. But 
Nannie, with her romantic daring, is a reasoning child. Who 
has said that the Americans are like pins, always held by the 
head? After a certain time she will perceive that she was 
mistaken as to the intensity of her feelings, especially if a 
marriage which pleases her becomes possible. Once married 



SOCIETY 97 

to another and quite happy, if she ever meets the young man 
of her little passion, she will say to him : — 

" How foolish I was ! But how I loved you ! " 

And in this reminiscence there will be so much of frank 
good-fellowship that the idea of resuming with the married 
woman the interrupted romance begun with the young girl 
will not occur a second time to the man who is the object of 
this singular confidence. 

With respect of these types, which nearly all lend them- 
selves to satire, it is only just to sketch another figure, which 
IS also to be found in this country of the "always too much," 
that of the well-balanced girl. The charming personality of 
the young girl who is all propriety and harmony is of all 
countries and all times. Moliere modelled his Henrietta 
after her, Dickens his Agnes, Zola his Denise. That which 
distinguishes her in America is the precocity and universality 
of her experience. Usually, in London as in Paris, the very 
well-balanced girl is, above all things, a child who has been 
well cared for, closely watched, whose life has been carefully 
regulated, whose education is narrow. She has either made 
the best of very painful circumstances, or else has undergone 
a very rigid discipline. 

Here, on the contrary, she has preserved her natural poise 
in the midst of the most lavish, unrestrained, and compli- 
cated life possible. But neither her father's wealth, nor the 
luxury in which she is wrapped, nor the world-fever by which 
she is swept along, have been able to prevail against her judg- 
ment and reasoning "faculty. By herself, she has distinguished 
between all the sensations born of her surroundings, recog- 
nized those which are sound and those which are unsound, 
chosen the former and repelled the latter. She has moulded 
for herself a character entirely in accord with her social posi- 
tion, and yet individual and peculiar to herself. 

To a girl like this, we know by instinct, no test would prove 
II 



98 OUTRE-MER 

dangerous, no accident of fortune find her other than she ought 
to be. So clearly do we perceive her to be energetic, clear- 
sighted, and gentle, that we understand that the vigor of her 
race, so unrestrained in every one else, is in her kept under 
control, in her reaches its limit. The absolute freedom of 
feminine manners in this country has not destroyed in her a 
single one of the graces of her sex, and these graces multiply 
with such vigor as will convince her husband, not alone of 
her irreproachable fidelity, but that she will be a support in 
trouble, of whatever nature. Like all the others, she is a 
highly finished person, self-made, and sufficient to herself, 
but with enough of intelligent good-nature to understand 
another person who is near her, to receive him, help him, and 
associate herself with him. 

That this young girl is not very rare in the United States 
proves that, if the principle of unrestrained freedom of action 
has produced grave faults, it has also produced new shades of 
moral beauty and charm. This creature, a mixture of femi- 
nine delicacy and virile will, attracts, surprises, entices, com- 
forts us. We respect her, and she moves us. We are grate- 
ful to her for existing, as for one of the noble things of the 
world; and we could dream — so perfect is she — of having 
her as a part of our lives, as confidante, counsellor, friend, — 
I was about to say, and I am sure that it is the best eulogy, — 
as comrade. 

Well or ill balanced, coquettish or sentimental, learned or 
reckless, designing or simple, the young American girl is 
before all things else a whole little universe, formed and 
developed entirely apart from masculine influence. It would 
seem as if the difference of spirit, of habits, almost of species, 
between her and her father, which I have already noticed, so 
entire as to be incredible, must inevitably result in some 
terrible moral catastrophe. If such are rare, it is because 



SOCIETV 99 

here, more than anywhere else, they practise the sensible and 
humane maxim, "Live and let live." Nevertheless, this ex- 
treme liberty is saved from friction only by the avoidance of 
familiarity; with the natural result — of great importance for 
the young girl, and still more for the young wife — that home 
life is less known in the United States than in any other 
country. 

A thousand signs indicate this sort of disintegration of the 
domestic hearth; in the first place, the singular facility of 
travelling, and especially the number of rich people who lead 
that hotel life which is so nearly unintelligible to Europeans, 
and especially to the French. 

" We call Rochester our home, but we have spent ten win- 
ters here," said a much-admired young woman. As these ten 
winters spent in New York correspond with ten summers at 
Newport, as many autumns at Lenox, and probably several 
springs in Paris, it may be imagined how much of a place the 
real home has in the life of such a family This singularly 
movable manner of life becomes more pronounced as one 
travels westward. The story goes that some cities in the far 
West are entirely composed of wooden huts, grouped around 
an immense hotel. 

It is in the hotel, that caravansary furnished with the ex- 
travagant luxury which newly made rich people delight in, 
that is sketched the first rude outline of that social life which 
you will find in all its glory in the great centres on the Atlan- 
tic seaboard. The family live in a hotel with their private 
drawing-room, which they adorn with pictures and draperies, 
and often with their own furniture. 

One must have sojourned in one of these hotels and dined 
with these people to be able to realize how entirely the mem- 
bers of these families live side by side rather than with one 
another. They eat, indeed, at the same table, but no one ever 
waits for another. The wife or the daughter is getting up from 



100 OUTRE-MER 

the table when the fiuher or the husband conies in to breakfast, 
kinch, or dinner. It is a very commonplace, but very expressive 
token of that which is the basis of American family life, — every 
one for himself and by himself. 

The young girl has this principle written on her innermost 
heart. Everything conspires to impress it upon her, and she has 
too fully accepted it not to know, when she marries, that this rule 
is to govern her own household as it did her father's before her. 
She is far enough from expecting, as our girls do, to find in the 
man she marries one with whom she will share every thought, 
a friend who will train her mind, her heart, her whole being. 
For that matter, one cannot say of her, as we say in French, 
that in marr\ing she becomes a woman {femme). She was 
that before she married, in her ideas, her character, her freedom, 
her habits. The difference is that on the one hand the possibih- 
ties of the future will be fewer for her, and on the other, that she 
will be of less account. With us the passage from girlhood to 
wifehood is an event. Here it is quite the other thing ; it is a 
resignation. 

Why is the young married woman less courted than the young 
girl in the United States ? This is the first question that forces 
itself upon the foreigner after a few weeks' residence. Is it 
that Americans respect marriage more than we do ? Is it that, 
their manners being simpler and purer, the young man's heart 
revolts at the bitter emotions, the cankered sadness, of unlawful 
love even in the moment of happiness? Is it because time is 
wanting for the deep-laid, far-reaching processes of seduction? 
Is it the hatred of falsehood, so strikingly characteristic of the 
Anglo-Saxon? Certain it is that in society you almost never 
hear an allusion to such connections as abound in Paris, and 
even in London. American conversation always avoids the 
fine of demarcation between coquetry and intimacy, between 
the surroundings of a fault and the f.iult itself. 



SOCIETY 101 

" Such things do not exist in the United States." So said 
one and another of my women friends here, and when I de- 
murred, adducing the conduct of such and such women with 
such and such men, as appearing to me to be indisputable evi- 
dence, they would answer : — 

" These women only want to be talked about, because that 
is the way people do in Europe. Only, instead of going on 
secretly, they make everything as public as possible, precisely 
because there is nothing serious." 

The foreigner can only reply by the favorite word of doubt 
of the most sceptical and least American of people, " Sara^ 

Two reasons, very different in character, however, make it 
evident a priori, so to speak, that the married woman must 
be more carefully guarded here than in the Old World. The 
first, which should neither be exaggerated nor underrated, is 
the reserve capital of puritanism which, in the past fifty years, 
has declined from year to year, almost from month to month, 
but has not entirely disappeared. One of the most eloquent 
magistrates of Massachusetts, Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes, 
has said in one of those brief and impressive speeches in which 
he excels : — 

" Even though our mode of expressing our wonder, our 
awful fear, our abiding trust in face of life and death and the 
unfathomable world has changed, yet at this day, even now, we 
New Englanders are still leavened with the puritan ferment." 

This is true in New England, which still continues to be the 
moral leaven of America. Now we must bear in mind that for 
two hundred years the Mosaic law, which punished adultery 
with death, was written in the codes of New England. The 
first mitigation of this stern law was simply to brand with the 
letter A the persons convicted of this crime. Such ferocities 
of legislation may be done away with, but they leave behind 
them, in public opinion, traces not to be lightly effaced. The 
campaign of Dr. Parkhurst, last winter, against the prostitutes 



102 OUTRE-MER 

of New York, and the raids carried out at his instance upon 
these dwellers in the " Tenderloin," — the name given to the 
disreputable part of Broadway, — attests that the harsh, reform- 
ing spirit of ancient times is not yet dead. It suffices to prove 
that the easy Parisian custom of accepting, while ridiculing, the 
triple family alliance, is not yet that of the United States, 

The second reason is less historic and less ideal. It inheres 
in that extraordinary facility of divorce which rigid moralists 
groan over. If they are right from the point of view of the 
greatest good, they are surely wrong from the standpoint of 
the least evil. Here, again, the Americans have obeyed their 
instinct for seeing things as they are, and are guided by 
facts, which they admit without discussing them. They start 
out from this perfectly simple idea, which, however, our Latin 
minds have not yet admitted, that divorce offers no menace to 
happy unions, and that it is greatly to public and private interest 
that the more quickly and easily the unhappy ones are broken 
the better. 

This ground taken, there was as it were a rivalry between 
the States as to which should do most to facilitate divorce. 
It is a standing joke, that the brakemen used to cry, at the 
stations in Chicago, " Twenty minutes' stop for divorce ! " It 
is a truthful charge that in certain Western codes the rupture 
of the marriage tie is not much more complicated than the 
purchase of a piece of ground. In most of them a six months' 
residence enables you to take advantage of their divorce laws ; 
in a few, North Dakota for example, ninety days are enough. 

Intemperance, a sentence to prison for two years, voluntary 
absence for one year, adhesion to an adverse religious sect, on 
the part of either husband or wife, — these are a few of the 
grounds of divorce which I select at random from the various 
articles of these codes. Not a week passes but you may read 

in the papers that Mr. X or Mrs. Z has gone to such 

or such a State to pass the time necessary to establish a resi- 



SOCIETY 103 

dence, after which they will be free to return to their former 
condition and form new ties. These villegiatures for the purpose 
of divorce are among the gayeties of the more advanced spirits. 

" I used to know Mrs. V well," said a Washington girl to 

me. " When we had a box in the New York Opera, we were 
always meeting on the train. It was just the time when she 
was going every week, for a few days, to the house in Dela- 
ware that she had hired for her divorce ! " 
/ From this faciUty of freedom from ill-advised bonds, it 
results that those unions which remain appear to be highly 
irreproachable, as do also those which are made after the rup- 
ture of a first marriage. There is, indeed, no reason why an 
ill-assorted union should continue. This is not ideal, to be 
sure ; but when you look carefully into it, you come at last K.6 
the conclusion that this flexible legislation does not create 
an unwholesome social system. Men and women become 
accustomed frankly and openly to start over again when they 
have made a mistake, and that is always better than the 
organized falsehood so common with us, which equally de- 
grades husband, wife, and lover. But perhaps all three of 
them would find the solution offered by the United States 
cruelly inconvenient in its so-called convenience. 

With the door to liberty thus ajar, ready to fly open at a 
push, how shall the young wife, so developed, so sufficient to 
herself, so energetically trained both to will and to do, how 
shall she submit herself to the moulding influences of the 
companion whom marriage has given her? She was inde- 
pendent before; she is independent still. I mean, thinking 
for herself, directing her life according to her own ideas, and 
continuing her self-development with the same determination 
that was hers before, without letting herself be moulded under 
the imprint and according to the ideas of her partner. That 
is the true epithet for marriage, — not indeed always, but very 
often. It is a social partnership, to which the man brings for 



104 OUTRE-MER 

capital his labor and his money, and the woman her beauty, 
her art of dress, and her social talents. 

Then come the children, who, with us, are the vital question 
of a household, its final reunion, its salvation. It is not thus on 
Anglo-Saxon soil. The idolatry of father and mother, which 
are the key to the French family — its weaknesses, the equal 
division of the family inheritance, its warmth also and its unity 
of interest, — this idolatry, a little morbid but very tender, is 
replaced in English and American countries by a more virile 
and colder vigilance, which does not stir the inner fibres of the 
heart, or at least which stirs them with a different thrill. My 
French friends of this part of the world are very severe on this 
point. They tell me that the hope of motherhood is carefully 
concealed as long as possible by the young wife, who blushes 
for it as for some animal function almost humiliating and to be 
concealed. They repeat as very characteristic the remark of 
an old lady who, when told that one of her young friends had 
just given birth to twins, exclaimed : — 

" How vulgar ! " 

They tell me of this and that society woman who has spent 
ten months on a. stretch in Europe, without distressing herself 
about her children, left to the care of relatives or friends. I do 
not know whether such desertions are the exception or the 
rule, and in any case I put little faith in anecdotes. In history 
they are all false, in literature all calumnious, and where social 
life is in question they are almost all exaggerated, without those 
shades of individuality which explain the anomalous or those 
circumstances which justify it. But, on the other hand, I 
believe in statistics, and those of divorce appear to me more 
conclusive. Fathers and mothers who are not brought together 
by their children cannot love them much, and, on the other 
hand, if the direct education of the child by its father and 
mother were more frequent, the independence of the young 
man and the yoimg girl would not be what it is. 



SOCIETY 105 

As the American marriage appears to be above all a partner- 
ship, so the American family appears to be more than anything 
else an association, — a sort of social camp, the ties of which 
are more or less strong according to individual sympathies, 
such as might exist between people not of the same blood. I 
am certain, not from anecdotes but from experience, that the 
friendship of brother and brother, or sister and sister, is entirely 
elective. So it is with the relations between father and son, 
mother and daughter. A young Frenchman much in love with 
a New York girl said to me in one of those moments when 
the coldness of the woman you love drives you to be cruelly 
frank : — 

" She has so little heart that she went to the theatre five 
weeks after her mother's death, and no one resented it." 

I knew that he was telling the truth. But what did it prove ? 
What do the inequalities permitted by the laws of inheritance 
prove ? Nothing if not that our natural , characteristics, in- 
stincts, sensibilities, are not the same as those of the people of 
Hhis country. They have much less power of self-giving, much 

ore of personal reaction ; and especially a much stronger will. 
Their will rules their hearts as well as their minds. This seems 
to us less tender. But are we good judges? 






We must continually keep in mind this general want of 
association in family life if we would in any degree understand 
the sort of soul celibacy, if we may use the term, which the 
American woman keeps all through her married life. No 
more in this second period of her life than in the first, does 
love bear that preponderating part which seems to us French- 
men an essential characteristic of the lot of woman. When 
a Parisian woman of forty reviews her life, the story that mem- 
ory tells her is the story of her emotions. To an American 
woman of the same age, it is more often the story of her 
factions, of what she calls, by a word I have before cited, her 



106 OUTRE-MER 

experiences. She gained, between the ages of eighteen and 
twenty-five, a conception of her own self, which was imposed 
upon her neither by her traditions — she has none — nor by 
the instructions of her parents — they never gave her any — 
nor even by her own nature ; for it is characteristic of these 
easily " adaptable " minds that their first instincts are chaotic 
and undetermined. They are Uke a blank check, which the 
will undertakes to fill out. But, whatever the will writes upon 
it is written in letters that will never be effaced. Action, 
action, always action, — this is the remorseless, but unchanging, 
devise of such a woman. Whether she seeks for a place in 
society, or is ambitious for artistic culture, or addicts herself to 
sport, or organizes " classes," as they say, for reading Browning, 
Emerson, or Shakespeare with her friends, whether she travels 
to Europe, India, or Japan, or remains at home to have some 
young girl among her friends " pour " tea for her, be sure that 
she will be always and incessantly active, indefatigably active, 
either in the lines of " refinement " or of " excitement." 

With what impressiveness these women utter both these 
words, which we must not weary of returning to ; for they, per- 
haps, sum up the entire American soul. They are bandied 
about in conversation like two formulae, in which are revealed 
the persistence of this creature, which, born of a stern race, 
and feeling herself fine, wills to become finer and ever finer ; 
who, reared amid democratic surroundings, wills to become 
distinguished and ever more distinguished ; who, daughter of 
a land of enterprise, loves to excite continually in herself the 
sensation of overstrained nerves. 

When you see ten, fifteen, thirty, fifty like this, the character 
of eccentricity which you first found in them by comparison 
with the women of Europe, disappears. A new type of feminine 
seduction is revealed to you, less affecting than irritating, enig- 
matic and sHghtly ambiguous by its indefinable blending of 
supple grace and virile firmness, by the alliance of culture and 



SOCIETY 107 

vigor, by the most thrilling nervous sensitiveness and the stur- 
diest health. The true place of such a creature in this society 
appears to you also, and the profound reason why these men, 
themselves all action, leave these women free thus to act with 
total independence. If it is permitted to apply an old legal 
term to creatures so subtle, so delicate, these, women are 
the delegates to luxury in this utilitarian civilization. Their 
mission is to bring into it that which the American has not time 
to create and which he desires to have : The flower of elegance, 
something of beauty, and, in a word, of aristocracy. They are 
the nobility in this land of business, a nobility developed by the 
very development of business, since the money which is made 
in the offices comes at last to them, and manipulated by their 
fingers is transfigured, blossoming into precious decorations, 
made intellectual in plays of fancy, — in fact, unutilized. 

A great artist, foremost of this epoch by the ardor of his 
efforts, the conscientiousness of his study, and the sincerity of 
his vision, John Sargent, has shown what I have tried to ex- 
press, in a portrait which I saw in an exhibition, — that of a 
woman whose name I do not know. It is a portrait such as 
the fifteenth-century masters painted, who, back of the indi- 
vidual found the real, and back of the model a whole social 
order. The canvas might be called "The American Idol," so 
representative is it. 

The woman is standing, her feet side by side, her knees 
close together, in an almost hieratic pose. Her body, ren- 
dered supple by exercise, is sheathed — you might say moulded 
— in a tight-fitting black dress. Rubies, like drops of blood, 
sparkle on her shoes. Her slender waist is encircled by a 
girdle of enormous pearls, and from this dress, which makes 
an intensely dark background for the stony brilliance of the 
jewels, the arms and shoulders shine out with another bril- 
liance, that of a flower-like flesh, — fine, white flesh, through 



108 OUTRE-MER 

which flows blood perpetually invigorated by the air of the 
country and the ocean. The head, intellectual and daring, 
with a countenance as of one who has understood everything, 
has, for a sort of aureole, the vaguely gilded design of one of 
those Renascence stuffs which the Venetians call sopra-risso. 
The rounded arms, in which the muscles can hardly be seen, 
are joined by the clasped hands, — firm hands, the thumb 
almost too long, which might guide four horses with the pre- 
cision of an English coachman. It is the picture of an energy 
at once delicate and invincible, momentarily in repose, and 
all the Byzantine Madonna is in that face, with its wide-open 
eyes. 

Yes, this woman is an idol, for whose service man labors, 
which he has decked with the jewels of a queen, behind each 
one of whose whims lie days and days spent in the ardent 
battle of Wall Street. Frenzy of speculations in land, cities 
undertaken and built by sheer force of millions, trains launched 
at full speed over bridges built on a Babel like sweep of 
arch, the creaking of cable cars, the quivering of electric 
cars, sliding along their wires with a crackle and a spark, the 
dizzy ascent of elevators, in buildings twenty stories high, 
immense wheat-fields of the West, its ranches, mines, colos- 
sal slaughter-houses, — all the formidable traffic of this coun- 
try of effort and struggle, all its labor, — these are what have 
made possible this woman, this living orchid, unexpected 
masterpiece of this civilization. 

Did not the very painter consecrate to her his intense toil? 
To be capable of such a picture, he must have absorbed some 
of the ardor of the Spanish masters, caught the subtlety of the 
great Italians, understood and practised the curiosities of 
impressionism, dreamed before the pictures in basilicas like 
Ravenna, and read and thought. Ah, how much of culture, 
of reflection, before one could fathom the secret depths of 
one's own race. He has expressed one of the most essential 



SOCIETY 109 

characteristics of the race, — the deification of woman, con- 
sidered not as a Beatrice as in Florence, nor as a courtesan as 
at Milan, but as a supreme glory of the national spirit. This 
woman can do without being loved. She has no need of 
being loved. What she symbolizes is neither sensuality nor 
tenderness. She is like a living object of art, the last fine 
work of human skill, attesting that the Yankee, but yesterday 
despairing, vanquished by the Old World, has been able to 
draw from this savage world upon which fate has cast him a 
wholly new civilization, incarnated in this woman, her luxury, 
and her pride. Everything is illuminated by this civiliza- 
tion, at the gaze of these fathomless eyes, in the expression 
of which the painter has succeeded in putting all the idealism 
of this country which has no ideal; all that which, perhaps, 
will one day be its destruction, but up to the present time is 
still its greatness, — a faith in the human Will, absolute, 
unique, systematic, and indomitable. 



r 



BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 

Back of the social and feminine world, as a support to its 
independence and individuality, in America, as everywhere 
else, stands man. But one feature distinguishes this civiliza- 
tion; the men of this country belong to a single category. 
In the United States, where there is no nobility, no squire- 
archy, almost no military, no diplomatic corps, and the 
smallest possible administrative body, society, in both senses 
of the word, belongs to the business man, an immense class, 
which includes the hotel manager and the politician, the 
former sinking his eight hundred thousand dollars in the 
furnishing of his hotel, the latter managing his own election, 
and adopting or rejecting laws with the methods of a contrac- 
tor. At the present time, the business man has even drawn 
the rural population under his control, and forced them into 
the whirlwind of his activity, far apart as the two classes are 
in all other countries. The extent of the territory, and the 
arrangements for railway transportation of cattle and grain in 
immense quantities, have brought them under the domain of 
companies of all sorts who, for their part, have "under- 
taken " to feed all America. 

One of the most significant proofs of this particular fact 
is the daily disappearance of the New England farmer, that 
delicious local personage, whose simple and genuine manners 
has furnished an inexhaustible object for the studies of so 
many romance writers, male and female. Incapable of strug- 
gling, isolated and single-handed, against the strong competi- 



BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 111 

tion of the West, these farmers emigrate toward the prairie, 
and you continually find advertisements in the newspapers, 
offering for sale their modest homesteads, with descriptions 
like the following, which I transcribe without changing a word. 

" S , Massachusetts. For sale. A farm of sixty acres : 

mowing, eight acres; pasture-land, eighteen; forest, thirty 
to forty; tillable ground, twelve. Almost all the hay crop can 
be cut by machine. One-story house, five rooms, somewhat 
out of repair. Small barn, in good condition. Good well, 
near the house, and running stream back of the barn. Twenty 
apple trees, twelve fruit trees of different varieties. Railway 

station at L , six miles distant; postoffice at S , one 

mile. Price, four hundred dollars; one hundred cash, the 
balance at four per cent interest." 

What a drama of rustic ruin may be descried back of these 
modest figures ! and behind the details of this humble inven- 
tory what a laborious and almost idyllic existence ! I have 
met analogous conditions far away in the South, among the 
survivors of those colonies of non-slaveholding whites, whom 
the blacks contemptuously call " crackers." I have before my 
eyes as I write the picture of a wooden house in the depths of 
the pine forests of Georgia. It is inhabited by an old man 
of seventy, with his daughter, his sons, and his sons' children ; 
boys with legs as muscular as their arms, running about bare- 
footed among the horses. 

These people had the proud courtesy of families who have 
never known any superior, having had neither vanities nor 
needs. The old man remembered having heard that his great 
grandfather came from France — from Brittany, he thought. 
The Christian name of Rene, handed down among them, at- 
tested to this far-away origin. Their light blue eyes, Celtic 
eyes, shone with the light of honor. On their table was nothing 
which was not the product of the soil and of their own labor. 

" We have everything except coffee and tobacco," they said ; 



112 OUTRE-MER 

" even wines." And they produced, with the pride of a Rob- 
inson receiving the Spanish captain, a pale red liquid, — grape 
juice, sweetened with cane sugar, and poured, in the absence 
of bottles, into a tin sauce-pan. Cows, goats, pigs, pastured 
freely around the house. The guns, hung over the door, had 
the lustre of weapons often used. 

It seemed as if I saw before me the primitive pioneer of the 
sort that abounded a hundred years ago. It is with them as 
with the bisons, the last head of which is jealously guarded in 
the Yellowstone Park. He has disappeared, and is being re- 
placed by the agricultural laborer, who is nothing but an instru- 
ment in the hands of business men, whom, from one end of 
this vast country to the other, you will find busily occupied in 
changing and developing its character. In the upper station 
they give it a peculiar elegance by the luxury of their palaces 
and villas, their wives and daughters. In the lower, they feed 
the nation by enrolling men in their service. 

*' I assert," said one of them the other day — Mr. Chauncey 
Depew, an orator of the highest ability, who would perhaps be 
president, if the democracy of America did not set itself against 
this plutocratic system — "I assert that a railway president ren- 
ders an enormous service to the community. He has twenty 
or thirty thousand men under him, representing with their fam- 
ilies from one to two hundred thousand souls ; and their wel- 
fare, not physical only, but mental, social, and moral, depends 
almost absolutely upon him." 

A packing business like that of Armour in Chicago, for 
example, furnishes daily employment to eleven thousand em- 
ployees. The generalissimo of this industrial army is often a 
man who at twenty years old was living in a " lean-to," that is, 
a hut of planks leaning up against a rock or a wall. He is not 
forty years old and he is " worth " five millions of dollars. In 
a few years more he will be worth ten, fifteen, and so on, till 
he dies of heart disease in his yacht cabin, or his private car, 



BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 113 

father-in-law of a lord or grandfather of young Italian princes ; 
but under his nickname of Jim, Tom, or Billy, famiharly re- 
gretted or cursed by his workmen according as he has made 
himself loved or hated by them. 

This is a truly new type of personage, impossible to find any- 
where else, and whom one must picture to oneself from small 
to great, — for the series is infinite, — in order really to under- 
stand what there is most original in this strange people. In 
the vigorous natures of these business men there is a vein of 
technical genius which no observer, however penetrating or 
imaginative, would hardly have expected. 

They tell me that another portrait painter — for the Ameri- 
cans have an extravagant passion for portraits and busts — 
was commissioned last year to paint one of the most celebrated 
of Wall Street speculators. Despairing of ever obtaining a sat- 
isfactory sitting, so full of business were his model's hours, the 
painter finally took his material to the business office of this 
gentleman, whom he painted in his characteristic attitude, with 
the paper strip of the " ticker " in his hand, upon which second 
by second were automatically inscribed the fluctuations in the 
value of stocks. It was an accurate symbol of what we men 
of art, or of abstract thought, succeed in getting when we study 
one of these builders of enormous fortunes. We see a gesture, 
an absorbed countenance, the tension of a prodigious energy, and 
that is all. What the manipulator of money feels while looking 
at his figures, the particular action of a mind of this quality in 
travail of combinations, why one triumphs and another comes 
to shipwreck, are all problems which so far remain insoluble. 

I have just mentioned the name of Mr. Chauncey Depew. 
In a collection of his speeches, published this very year, I 
find a singular expression on the " unequalled genius " of the 
first Vanderbilt, the celebrated Commodore. The few instances 
which the orator brings to his support of his assertion manifest, 
indeed, such a superiority that no one thinks of being surprised 
I 



114 OUTRE-MER 

at the epithet. We admit with the speaker, that an intellectual 
force has been at work there, as remarkable as that which wins 
battles, governs Parliaments, makes or unmakes treaties. But 
he understands this force, because he has worked beside it, 
under it, with it. To us who have not done so, who cannot 
have that practical vision, his professional talent remains unde- 
finable and unattainable. 

A single resource is left us : to gaze with all our powers, 
through the ideas awakened by the sight, upon the work pro- 
duced by these business men, the scene amid which their 
activities are carried on, the plans which they executed ; and 
venture a few conjectures upon the sort of human nature which 
this work, this setting, these plans, must take for granted. Many 
a time in the course of this journey I have tried this experi- 
ment, particularly in a too short Western trip, or at least to 
what was lately the West, Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis ; for 
every five years the frontier of civilization draws farther west- 
ward, and the time is approaching when the people of Colorado 
will be offended at not being considered Eastern people ! What 
does it all matter — East, West ? These are but words. The 
prodigious reality is the growth of the three cities whose names 
I have just written, the added ages of which do not amount 
to more than a century and a half! When you reflect that 
behind this inordinate growth, this almost instantaneous pas- 
sage from a desert to a city of two hundred thousand, five hun- 
dred thousand, eight hundred thousand inhabitants, one always 
comes face to face with the energy of the business man, the 
prejudices of the man of letters cease to influence you. I 
hope that there will not be too many traces of it in these 
sketches taken from my journal, and the two or three psycho- 
logical theories which they comment upon. 

Chicago m an autumn morning from the tower of the 
Auditorium. — It is two hundred and seventy feet high, and 



BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 115 

it crowns and dominates a chaotic cyclopean structure which 
connects a colossal hotel with a colossal theatre. One's 
first visit on arriving should be here, in order to get the 
strongest impression of the enormous city, lying black on the 
shore of its blue lake. 

Last night, when the conductor called out the name of the 
station at which I was to leave the train, a frightful storm, 
such as one experiences nowhere but in America, was delug- 
ing the whole country with cataracts of water, and between 
the station and the hotel I could see nothing but the outlines 
of gigantic buildings hanging, as it were, from a dark sky 
streaked with lightning, and between them, small wooden 
houses, so frail that it seemed as if the furious wind must 
scatter their ruins to the four quarters of the tempest-tossed 
city. 

This morning the sky is clear, with a soft, warm clearness, 
washed clean by the rain. It brings out all the more strikingly 
the dark coloring of the city, as it is reflected back from the 
deeper azure of Lake Michigan, ploughed with steamboats 
like a sea. Far as the eye can reach Chicago stretches away, 
its flat roofs and its smoke — innumerable columns of whitey- 
gray smoke. They rise straight upward, then stoop to heap 
themselves into vapory capitals, and at last meet together in 
a dome above the endless avenues. 

It needs but a few minutes for the eyes to become accus- 
tomed to the strange scene. Then you discern differences of 
height among these levels. Those of only six or seven stories 
seem to be the merest cottages, those of two stories are not 
to be distinguished from the pavement, while the "buildings" 
of fourteen, fifteen, twenty stories, uprise like the islands 
of the Cyclades as seen from the mountains of Negroponte. 

A mighty murmur uprises from below like that of no other 
city. There is an incessant tinkle of locomotive bells, that 
seem to be sounding in advance the knelL of those they are 



116 OUTRE-MER 

about to crush. They are everywhere, crossing the streets, 
following the lake shore, passing over the river which rolls its 
leaden waters under soot-colored bridges, meeting and cross- 
ing each other's tracks, pursuing and overtaking one another. 
Now you distinguish an elevated road, and there, beside the 
railways on the level of the street, you see other trains on the 
avenues, three or four cars long, but without locomotive. It 
is the cable system. And there are steamers lowering their 
yards and coming to anchor in the harbor. 

Yes, the scene is strange even to unreality, when one re- 
minds oneself that this Babel of industry grew out of a tiny 
frontier post, — Fort Dearborn. The Indians surprised it and 
massacred the garrison about 1812. I am not very far beyond 
my youth, and yet how many men have I known that were 
alive then, and how near that date is! In 187 1, that is to 
say, later than the Franco -Prussian War, there was fire writh- 
ing around this very place where I am standing this bright 
morning. The irresistible devouring force of one of the most 
terrific conflagrations mentioned in history transformed this 
entire plain into a burning mass which still smoked after many 
days had passed. 

"Where this tower now stands," said my Chicago guide, 
concluding the epos of that awful event, "you might have 
stood in a bed of ashes, with not a single house between the 
lake on your right hand and the river on your left." 

I looked from one to the other, the river and the lake, as I 
heard these words. That month of October, 187 1, was more 
than near to me; it seemed as if I could touch it, as if I were 
still in it. I could tell the names of the books that I was 
reading then, the articles that I was writing. I could remem- 
ber how I spent almost every day. I realized with an almost 
physical accuracy the length of the years since that date, — 
twenty-two. How few hours that makes, after all ! and I 
leaned again over the balustrade of the tower, gazing down 



BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 117 

upon this prodigy, stunned with the thought of what men have 
done ! 

Men ! The word is hardly correct applied to this perplexing 
city. When you study it more in detail, its aspect reveals so 
little of the personal will, so Httle caprice and individuality, in 
its streets and buildings, that it seems like the work of some 
impersonal power, irresistible, unconscious, like a force of 
nature, in whose service man was merely a passive instrument. 

This power is nothing else than that business fever which 
here throbs at will, with an unbridled violence like that of an 
uncontrollable element. It rushes along these streets, as once 
before the devouring flame of fire ; it quivers ; it makes itself 
visible with an intensity which lends something tragical to this 
city, and makes it seem like a poem to me. 

When, from this overhanging tower, you have gazed down 
upon this immense volcano of industry and commerce, you go 
down to look more closely into the details of this exuberant 
life, this exhaustless stream of activity. You walk along the 
sidewalks of streets which bear marks of haste, — here flag- 
stones, there asphalt, yonder a mere line of planks crossing 
a miry swamp. This want of continuity in road material is 
repeated in the buildings. At one moment you have nothing 
around you but " buildings." They scale the very heavens 
with their eighteen and twenty stories. The architect who built 
them, or, rather, made them by machinery, gave up all thought 
of colonnades, mouldings, classical decorations. He ruthlessly 
accepted the speculator's inspired conditions, — to multiply as 
much as possible the value of the bit of earth at the base by 
multiplying the superimposed " offices." 

One might think that such a problem would interest no one 
but an engineer. Nothing of the kind ! The simple power 
of necessity is to a certain degree a principle of beauty ; and 
these structures so plainly manifest this necessity that you feel a 
strange emotion in contemplating them. It is the first draught of 



118 OUTRE-MER 

a new sort of art, — an art of democracy made by the masses 
and for the masses, an art of science, where the invariabiUty of 
natural laws gives to the most unbridled daring the calmness 
of geometrical figures. The portals of the basements, usually 
arched as if crushed beneath the weight of the mountain which 
they support, look like dens of a primitive race, continually 
receiving and pouring forth a stream of people. You lift your 
eyes, and you feel that up there behind the perpendicular wall, 
with its innumerable windows, is a multitude coming and going, 
— crowding the offices that perforate these chffs of brick and 
iron, dizzied with the speed of the elevators. You divine, you 
feel the hot breath of speculation quivering behind these win- 
dows. This it is which has fecundated these thousands of 
square feet of earth, in order that from them may spring up 
this appalling growth of business palaces, that hide the sun 
from you and almost shut out the light of day. 

Close beside the preposterous. Babel-like building extends a 
shapeless bit of ground, undefined, bristling, green with a scanty 
turf, on which a lean cow is feeding. Then follows a succes- 
sion of little wooden houses, hardly large enough for a single 
family. Next comes a Gothic church, transformed into a shop, 
with a sign in great metal characters. Then comes the red and 
pretentious ruin of some other building burned the other week. 
Vacant lots, shanties, churches, ruins, — speculation will sweep 
over it all to-morrow, this evening perhaps, and other "buildings " 
will spring up. But time is needed, and these people have 
none. These two years past, instead of completing their half- 
finished city, they have been amusing themselves in building 
another over yonder, under pretext of their exhibition. It is 
entirely white, a dream city, with domes like those of Ravenna, 
colonnades like those at Rome, lagoons like Venice, a fair of the 
world like Paris. 

They have succeeded, and now the most composite, the 
most cosmopolitan of human mixtures fill these suburban and 



BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 119 

elevated railways, these cable cars, coaches, carriages, which over- 
flow upon these unfinished sidewalks before these wildly dissim- 
ilar houses. And as at Chicago, it seems that everything and 
everybody must be larger, more developed, stronger, so from 
block to block in the middle of these streets are posted, to 
maintain order, enormous mounted policemen, tall as Pome- 
ranian grenadiers ; gigantic human barriers against which break 
the seething eddies of this multitude. Most of them are Ger- 
mans ; their red faces are unformed as if hewn out with a 
hatchet, as if hastily blocked out, and their bullock-like necks 
and shoulders make a striking comment on divers facts of the 
daily papers, which continually tell of some " hands up " 
performed in the taverns, the gambling-houses, or simply in a 
carriage, or on the tramway. 

" Hands up ! " It is the classic command of the Western 
robber, as he enters, revolver in hand, his first business to 
make sure that you have not yours. How many times has it 
been uttered in the suburbs of this city, the meeting-place of 
the adventurers of the two worlds? How many times will it 
yet be uttered? But the spirit of adventure is also the spirit 
of enterprise, and if the size of the policemen of this surpris- 
ing city attests the frequency of surprises attempted by these 
ruffians, it completes its complex physiognomy; different, 
surely, from every other since the foundation of the world, 
a mosaic of extreme civilization and almost barbarism, a 
savage existence only part discerned through the abruptness 
of this industrial creation. In short, it is Chicago, a mira- 
cle that would confound the dead of seventy years ago, if they 
were to return to earth and find themselves in this city, now 
the ninth in the world as to population, which when they 
were alive had not a single house. 

One of the enormous branches of traffic of this city is in 
meat. The Chicago folk are a little ashamed of it. In earlier 



120 OUTRE-MER 

days they would talk to you of their packing-houses, with that 
artless pride which is one of the charms of great parvenus. 
It is the simplicity natural to an elemental strength, which 
knows itself strong and loves to exercise itself frankly. They 
are tired now of hearing their detractors call them the inhabi- 
tants of Porkopolis. They find it a grievance that their city 
is always "identified," as they say here, with that brutal 
butchery, when it has among its publishing houses one of the 
vastest marts of books in the world, when its newspapers never 
let any incident of literature or art pass without investigating 
it, when it has founded a university at a cost of seven mil- 
lions of dollars, when it has just gathered together representa- 
tives of all forms of belief, at its remarkable Parliament of 
Religions, — a phenomenon unique in the history of human 
idealism! Chicago aspires to be something more than the 
distributor of food, although last year a single one of its firms 
cut up and distributed one million seven hundred and fifty 
thousand hogs, a million and twenty-five thousand beeves, and 
six hundred and twenty-five thousand sheep. Its enemies 
seek to crush it under figures like these, omitting to remem- 
ber that the Chicago of the abattoirs is also the Chicago of 
the "White City," the Chicago of a museum which is already 
incomparable, the Chicago which gave Lincoln to the United 
States. 

On the other hand, these abattoirs furnish material most 
precious to the foreigner who desires to understand the spirit 
in which the Americans undertake their great enterprises. 
A slaughter-house capable of shipping in twelve months, to 
the four parts of this immense continent, three millions five 
hundred thousand dressed cattle is worth the trouble of inves- 
tigating. Everywhere else the technical details are very diffi- 
cult to grasp. They are less so here, the directors of these 
colossal manufactories of roast beef and hams having discov- 
ered that the best possible advertisement is to admit the 



BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 121 

public to witness their processes of working. They have 
made a visit to their establishments, if not attractive, — physi- 
cal repulsion is too strong for that, — at least convenient and 
thorough. On condition of having your nerves wrung once 
for all, these are among the places where you shall best see 
how American ingenuity solves the problems of a prodigiously 
complicated organization. 

I therefore did like other unprejudiced tourists, and visited 
the "stock yards" and the most celebrated among the "pack- 
ing-houses," as they are called, — cutting-up houses, rather, — 
which is here in operation; the one, indeed, the statistics of 
whose operations I have but now quoted. This walk through 
that house of blood will always remain to me one of the most 
singular memories of my journey. I think, however, that 
I owe to it a better discernment of the characteristic features 
of an American business concern. If this is so, I shall have 
no reason to regret the painful experience. 

To reach the "Union Stock Yards," the carriage crosses an 
immense section of the city, even more incoherent than those 
which border on the elegant Michigan Avenue. It stops 
before the railways, to permit the passage of trains running 
at full speed. It crosses bridges, which immediately after 
uprear themselves to permit the passage of boats. It passes 
by hotels which are palaces, and laborers' houses which are 
hovels. It skirts large plots of ground, where market-gar- 
deners are cultivating cabbages amongst heaps of refuse, and 
others which bear nothing but advertisements. How shall I 
deny myself the pleasure of copying this one, among a hundred 
others : — 

" Louis XIV. was crowned King of France at the age of five 

years (1643), X 's pepsin had been crowned with success 

as a remedy for indigestion before it had been publicly known 
a single year." 



122 OUTRE-MER 

The advertising fields give place to more houses, more rail- 
ways, under a sky black with clouds, or smoke, — one hardly 
knows which, — and on both sides of the road begin to appear 
fenced enclosures, where cattle are penned by the hundred. 
There are narrow lanes between the fence, with men on horse- 
back riding up and down. These are the buyers, discussing 
prices with the " cowboys " of the West. 

You have read stories of the "ranches." This adventur- 
ous prairie life has taken hold upon your imagination. Here 
you behold its heroes, in threadbare overcoats, slouch hats, 
and the inevitable collar and cuffs of the American. But for 
their boots, and their dexterity in guiding their horses by the 
knees, you would take them for clerks. They are a proof, 
among many others, of the instinctive disdain of this realistic 
people for the picturesque in costume. That impression 
which I had in the park in New York, almost the first day, as 
of an immense store of ready-made clothes hurrying hither 
and thither, has never left me. And yet, nothing can be less 
"common," in the bad sense of the word, than Americans in 
general, and these Western cowboys in particular. Their 
bodies are too nervous, too lithe, under their cheap clothes. 
Their countenances, especially, are too intent and too sharply 
outlined, too decided and too stern. 

The carriage stops before a building which, in its massive- 
ness and want of character, is like all other manufactories. 
My companions and I enter a court, a sort of alley, crowded 
with packing-boxes, carts, and people. A miniature railway 
passes along it, carrying packing-boxes to a waiting train, 
entirely composed of refrigerator cars, such as I saw so many 
of as I came to Chicago. Laborers were unloading these 
packing-boxes; others were coming and going, evidently in- 
tent upon their respective duties. There was no sign of 
administrative order, as we conceive it, in this establishment, 
which was yet so well ordered. But already one of the engineers 



BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 123 

had led us up a staircase, and we enter an immense hall, 
reeking with heavy moisture saturated with a strong acrid 
odor, which seems to seize you by the throat. We are in the 
department where the hogs are cut up. There are hundreds 
of men hard at work, whom we have not time so much as to 
look at. Our guide warns us to stand aside, and before us 
glides a file of porkers, disembowelled and hung by their hind 
feet from a rod, along which they slip toward a vaulted open- 
ing, where innumerable other such files await them. The 
rosy flesh, still ruddy with the life that but now animated 
them, gleams under the electric light that illuminates those 
depths. We go on, avoiding these strange encounters as best 
we may, and reach at last, with feet smeared in a sort of 
bloody mud, a platform whence we can see the initial act of 
all this labor, which now seems so confused, but which we 
shall shortly find so simple and easy to understand. There 
are the pigs, in a sort of pit, alive, grunting and screaming, 
as if they had a vision of the approach of the horrible ma- 
chine, from which they can no more escape than a doomed 
man whose head lies on the guillotine. It is a sort of mov- 
able hook, which, being lowered by a man, seizes one of the 
creatures by the cord which ties its hind legs together. The 
animal gives a screech, as he hangs, head downward, with quiv- 
ering snout and a spasmodic agitation of his short fore legs. 
But already the hook has slid along the iron bar, carrying the 
hapless victim to a neighboring recess where, as it slips by, a 
man armed with a long knife cuts its throat, with a slash so 
well aimed and effective that there is no need to repeat it. 
The creature utters a more terrific screech, a stream of blood 
spurts out, jet black and as thick as your arm. The snout 
quivers more pitifully, the short legs are agitated more franti- 
cally, but the death struggle only quickens the motion of the 
hook, which glides on to a third attendant. 

The latter, with a quick movement, cuts down the animal. 



124 OUTRE-MER 

The hook slides back, and the carcass falls into a sort of canal 
tank filled with boiling water, in which an automatic rake 
works with a quick vibratory motion. In a few seconds it has 
caught the creature, turned it over and over, caught it again, 
and thrown the scalded carcass to another machine, which in 
a few more seconds has shaved it from head to tail. In an- 
other second, another hook has descended, and another bar 
carries that which, four minutes ago, was a living, suffering 
creature, toward that arched opening where, on coming in, I 
had seen so many similar relics. It is already the turn of 
another to be killed, shaved, and finished off. The operation 
is of such lightning quickness that you have no time to realize 
its atrocity. You have no time to pity the poor things, no 
time to marvel at the cheerfulness with which the butcher — 
a red-headed giant, with shoulders broad enough to carry an 
ox — goes on with his horrible work. 

And yet, even in its lower forms, life is something so mys- 
terious, the death and sufferings, even of a creature of the 
humblest order, are something so tragic when, instead of care- 
lessly picturing them you look them thus full in the face, that 
all spectators, and they are many, cease to laugh and joke. 
For my part, before this coarse slaughter-house scene I felt 
myself seized with an unreasoning sadness, very short but very 
intense, as if, for a few minutes, the spirit of Thomas Grain- 
dorge had passed before me, — the philosophic dealer in salt 
pork and oil, so dear to my master, Taine. It suddenly 
seemed as if I saw before me existence itself, and all the work 
of nature, incarnated in a pitiable symbol. All that I had 
often thought of death was as if concrete before my eyes, in 
the irresistible clutch of that hook lifting those creatures, as 
the overpowering force of destruction which is in the world 
will one day seize us all, — sages, heroes, artists, as well as 
these poor unconscious brutes. I saw them rushing, writhing, 
moaning, their death agonies following fast on one another, 



BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 125 

as ours follow one another, only a little more rapidly, — how- 
little more, considering how fast time flies, and how small a 
part remains for all that must be done ! And the way that we 
looked in at this ghastly scene, my companions and I, was 
in nothing different from the way with which others will one 
day look on at our entrance into the great darkness, as on a 
picture, a something exterior, whose reality, after all, concerns 
only the being who undergoes it! 

We went into the department reserved for the cattle. Here 
the death struggle is different. No outcry, almost no blood ; 
no terrified expectation on the creature's part. And the scene 
is all the more tragic. The animals are penned by twos, in 
stalls like those of a stable, though without the manger. You 
see them trying, with their intelligence and their gentleness, 
to accommodate themselves to the narrow space. They gazed 
with their large, soft eyes — upon whom? The butcher, 
standing in a passageway a little above them. This man 
holds in his hand a slender bludgeon of steel. He is waiting 
until the ox is in the right position. You see him gently, 
caressingly, guiding the animal with the tip of his bludgeon. 
Suddenly he uplifts it. It falls upon the creature's forehead, 
and it sinks down in a lifeless heap. 

In an instant a hook has lifted it up, blood pouring from 
the mouth and nostrils, its large glassy eyes overshadowed with 
a growing darkness, and within another minute another man 
has stripped the skin from the breast, letting it hang down 
like an apron, has cut open the carcass, and sent it by the 
expeditious method of the sliding bar, to take its place in the 
refrigerating-room. Thousands of them await here the time 
for being carried and hung up in other rooms, also of ice, but 
on wheels, ready to be despatched. I see the closing of the 
last car of a train on the point of departure. The locomotive 
whistles and puffs; the bell rings. On what table of New 
York or Boston, Philadelphia or Savannah, will at last appear 



126 OUTRE-MER 

this meat, fattened on the prairie pasture-lands of some dis- 
trict in some Western State, and here prepared in such a way 
that the butcher will have merely to cut it into pieces? It 
will arrive as fresh, as intact, as if there had not been thou- 
sands and thousands of miles between the birth, death, and 
dismemberment of the enigmatical and peaceable creature. 

If there was nothing but killing to be seen in this manufact- 
ure of food, it would hardly be worth while to go through so 
many bloody scenes for the sake of verifying, in one of its 
lower exemplifications, what the philosopher Huxley some- 
where magnificently calls "the gladiatorial theory of exist- 
ence," the severe law that murder is necessary to life. But 
this is only a first impression, to experience before passing to 
a second, that of the rapidity and ingenuity of the cutting-up 
and packing of this prodigious quantity of perishable meat. 
I don't know who it was who sportively said that a pig that 
went to the abattoir at Chicago came out fifteen minutes later 
in the form of ham, sausages, large and small, hair oil, and 
binding for a Bible. It is a witty exaggeration, yet hardly 
overdone, of the rapid and minute labor which we had just 
seen bestowed upon the beasts killed before our eyes; and the 
subdividing of this work, its precision, simplicity, quick suc- 
cession, succeeding in making us forget the necessary but 
intolerable brutality of the scenes we had been witnessing. 

An immense hall is furnished with a succession of counters 
placed without much order, where each member of the animal 
is cut apart and utilized without the loss of a bone or a tendon. 
Here, with a quick, automatic blow, which never misses, a 
man cuts off first the hams, then the feet, as fast as he can 
throw them into caldrons, which boil and smoke them before 
your eyes. Farther along, a hatchet, moved by machinery, 
is at work making sausage-meat, which tubes of all sizes will 
pour forth in rolls ready for the skins, that are all washed 
and prepared. The word "garlic," which I see written on a 



BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 127 

box in German, "Knoblauch," and the accompanying inscrip- 
tion, transports me to the time of the Franco- Prussian War, 
when each Prussian soldier carried in his sack just such pro- 
visions, which had come from this very place. These products 
of Chicagoan industry will be sent far enough beyond New York ! 

Elsewhere the head and jowl are cleaned, trimmed, and 
dressed, to figure in their natural form in the show window 
of some American or European market. Elsewhere, again, 
enormous receptacles are being filled with suet which boils 
and bubbles, and having been cunningly mixed with a certain 
proportion of cream will be transformed into margarine, re- 
fined in an automatic beating machine of which we admired 
the artful simplicity. 

"A workingman invented that," said our guide. "For 
that matter," he added, "almost all the machines that are 
used here were either made or improved by the workmen." 

These words shed light for us upon all this vast work- 
shop. We understood what these men require of a machine 
that for them prolongs, multiplies, perfects the acts of men. 
Once again we felt how much they have become refined in 
their processes of work, how they excel in combining with 
their personal effort the complication of machinery, and also 
how the least among them has a power of initiative, of direct 
vision and adjustment. 

Seated again in our carriage, and rolling away over the 
irregular wooden pavement made of round sections of trees 
embedded at pleasure in the mud, we reflected upon what we 
had just seen. We tried to discern its intellectual significance, 
if we may use this word in reference to such an enterprise. 
And why not ? We' are all agreed that the first characteristic 
of this enterprise is the amplitude, or rather the stupendous- 
ness, of its conception. For an estabHshment like this to have, 
in a few years, brought up the budget of its employees to five 
million five hundred thousand dollars, that is, to more than 



128 OUTRE-MER 

twenty-seven millions of francs, its founders must have clearly 
perceived the possibilities of an enormous extension of busi- 
ness, and have no less clearly perceived, defined, and deter- 
mined its practical features. 

A colossal effort of imagination on the one hand, and, on the 
other, at the service of the imagination, a clear and carefully 
estimated understanding of the encompassing reality, — these 
are the two features everywhere stamped upon the unparalleled 
estabhshment which we have just visited. One of us pointed 
out another fact, — that the principal practical feature is the 
railway, reminding us that the locomotive has always been an 
implement of general utility in American hands. By it they 
revolutionized military art and created a full-panoplied modern 
warfare, such as the Germans were later to practise at our 
expense. In the great national war of i860, they first showed 
what advantage could be taken of this new means of mobili- 
zation. The length of the trains they sent out during that 
period has passed into legend. In fact, the establishment 
which we have been discussing is only one particular case of 
that universal use of the railway, which is itself only a partic- 
ular illustration of that essentially American turn of mind, — 
the constant use of new methods. 

The entire absence of routine, the daily habit of letting the 
fact determine the action, of following it fearlessly to the end, — 
these characteristics grow out of the other, and this acute con- 
sciousness of the fact also explains that sort of superficial 
incoherence in the distribution of labor which we have already 
noticed. Extreme clearness, perspicuity of administrative order, 
always spring from an a priori theory. All societies and all 
enterprises in which realism, rather than system, rules are con- 
structed by juxtaposition, by series of facts accepted as they 
arise. But how should the people here have leisure to concern 
themselves with those small, fine points of administrative order 
with which our Latin peoples are so much in love ? Competi- 



BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 129 

tion is too strong, too ferocious, almost. There is all of war- 
fare and its breathless audacity back of the enterprises of this 
country, even of those most firmly established, like this one. 

Our guide, who listens to our philosophizing without seeming 
much to disapprove, tells us that this very year, in order to 
elude a coalition of speculators in grain, which he explains to 
us, the head of the house which we have just visited was forced 
to erect in nineteen days, for the housing of his own wheat, a 
building three hundred feet square by a hundred high ! 

"Yes, in nineteen days, working night and day," he said, 
smihng ; " but we Americans like ' hard work.' " 

With this almost untranslatable word, — to one who has not 
heard it uttered here, — our visit ends. It sums it up and 
completes it with a terseness worthy of this people of much 
action and few phrases ! 

I visited in detail the building of one of the principal Chicago 
newspapers, just when they were printing the Sunday edition, 
— a trifling affair of twenty-four pages. I had seen in New 
York also on a Saturday evening, the making up of such a 
number, — that of the Herald. It had forty pages, and pict- 
ures ! There was a m.atter of a hundred and fifty thousand 
copies to be sent out by the early morning trains. When the 
circulation reaches such figures as these, a newspaper is not 
merely a machine for moulding public opinion, of a power 
incalculable in a democratic country, it is also an inconceivably 
compHcated business to carry on. Precisely because this busi- 
ness differs radically from that which the day before yesterday 
I was endeavoring to understand, I shall be the better able to 
judge whether the general features which I there discovered 
are to be found in all American enterprises. I can judge of 
that more easily here than in New York, the number of copies 
of the paper being somewhat less than in New York, and the 
process of shipping more convenient to follow. 

K 



130 OUTRE-MER 

It needed not five hundred steps in these offices to make 
evident to me the simultaneous play of those two mental ten- 
dencies which appeared to me so characteristic the other day, — 
the enormous range of invention, and the constant, minute, 
ever-watchful adoption of new means. The American journalist 
does not propose to himself to reach this or that reader, but all 
readers. He does not propose to publish articles of this or 
that kind, but of all kinds. His purpose is to make his news- 
paper an accurate mould of all that actually is, a sort of relief 
map, which shall be an epitome, not of the day, but of the 
hour, the minute, so all-embracing and complete that to- 
morrow a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand, a million 
persons shall have before them at breakfast a compendious 
picture first of their own city, next of their State, then of all 
the States of the Union, and finally of Europe, Asia, Africa, and 
Australia. Nor does this ambition content them ; it is their 
will that these hundred thousand, two hundred thousand, mil- 
lion of readers shall find in their favorite newspaper that which 
shall answer all questions of every sort which they may put to 
themselves upon politics, finance, religion, the arts, literature, 
sport, society, and the sciences. It is a daily encyclopedia, set 
to the key of the passing moment, which is already past. 

The meaning of this colossal project is shown naturally and 
in every possible way in every part of the newspaper building. 
Workmen and editors must be able to take their meals at any 
hour, and without leaving the building. They have therefore 
their own bar and restaurant. The printing of the pictures, so 
dear to Americans, must not be delayed. The paper has its 
type foundry, a regular smelting-shop, where the lead boils in 
the coppers. The news must be gathered up to the last second, 
like water in the desert, without losing a drop. The paper has 
its own telegraph and telephone wires, by which it is in com- 
munication with the entire world. At the time of the last presi- 
dential election, a number of Mr. Cleveland's partisans came 



BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 131 

together here, in one of the editorial rooms which was shown 
me, and from there they conversed with the candidate, himself 
in New York, receiving his instructions and giving him informa- 
tion. And what presses ! Capable of turning off work which 
thirty years ago would have required a force of how many hun- 
dreds of men ! Two workmen are enough to-day. 

I find here a press of the kind of which I saw a large size in 
the New York Herald building, which, they told me there, turned 
off seventy-thousand numbers in two hours. The enormous 
machine is going at full speed when I approach it. Its roar is 
so great that no voice can be heard beside it. It is a noise 
hke the roar of Niagara, and the colossal strip of paper rapidly 
unrolling as it is drawn through the machine gives an effect as 
of falling water, or the eddying of liquid metal. You see a 
whiteness gliding by, bent and folded by the play of innumer- 
able bars of steel, and at the other end a sort of mouth pouring 
forth newspapers of sixteen pages all ready for distribution. 
The machine has seized the paper, turned and re-turned it, 
printed it on both sides, cut it, folded it, and here is a portion 
of a colossal number which without undue haste a child joins 
with the other portions. 

In presence of this formidable printing creature — it is the 
only expression that will serve my turn — I feel again, as in 
New York, a sensation as of a power which transcends the 
individual. This printing press is a multiplier of thought to 
an extent not measurable by any human arithmetic. There is 
a singular contrast between the extreme precision of its organs 
— as delicate and accurate as those of a watch — and that in- 
definite reach of mind projection which Americans accept 
as they accept all facts. To their mind amplitude calls for 
amplitude by a sequence which it is easy to follow in the 
history of journalism; having conceived the idea of a paper 
of enormous circulation, they invented machines which would 
produce copies enough, and, as their machines appeared to 



132 OUTRE-MER 

them capable of producing a large number of copies, their 
conception of circulation increased in parallel lines. There 
can be no doubt that in less than twenty years they will have 
found means of producing papers of which five hundred 
thousand copies a day will be sold, like our Petit Journal, 
only theirs wLU have sixteen, twenty-four, forty, sixty folio 
pages. 

This is the practical aspect of the plant; there is another. 
In vain is a newspaper conceived of and managed as a matter 
of business — it is a business of a special kind. It must have 
a moral purpose, must take its stand for or against such a law, 
for or against such a person; it must have its own individu- 
ality. It cannot owe its individuality, as with us, to the per- 
sonality of its editors, since its articles are not signed; nor 
even, as in England, to the style and manner of the articles. 
The "editorial," as they call the leaders, occupies too small 
a place in this enormous mass of printed paper. And yet 
each one of the great newspapers of New York, Chicago, or 
Boston is a creation by itself, made in the image of him who 
edits it, — usually the proprietor. In the same way the presi- 
dent of a railway company is usually the principal stockholder. 

Here, again, is a particular feature of large business enter- 
prises in America and one which explains their vitality; a 
business is always the property of a man, the visible will of 
that man, his energy, as it were, incarnated and made evi- 
dent. The formula which I just now used and emphasized 
very happily expresses this intimate relation between the man 
and his work. You will hear it currently said that Mr. So- 
and-so has long been "identified" with such a hotel, such a 
bank, or railway, or newspaper, and this identification is so 
complete that if, on passing in a street car before that hotel 
or bank, or railway station, or newspaper, you ask your neigh- 
bor about it, he will always reply to you with a proper name. 
From this it results that in all American enterprises there is 



BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 133 

an elasticity, a vitality, a continual "Forward!" and also an 
indefatigable combativeness. 

I recognize this latter characteristic once again as I pass 
through these oflfices, if only by the minute questions of my 
guide as to the French press and our methods of securing a 
superior literary criticism. They feel that this is our peculiar 
excellence, and they long to have their own newspapers attain 
to it. Every actual director of one of these great public enter- 
prises is thus on the watch for possible modifications which 
may distinguish his sheet from all others, continually working 
it over and loading it down with more facts, more articles, 
enrolling more people in its service, employing them to 
better purpose. 

Thus managed, the direction of such an enterprise becomes 
a work of incalculable complexity. The power to which 
these dictators of public opinion attain is so exceptional and 
so real, its existence means so much that is dear to Ameri- 
cans, — immense fortune and immense responsibility, enor- 
mous labor to undergo and the continual manifestation of the 
fact that the ambition of truly enterprising men continually 
impels them into these lines. A city is no sooner founded 
than papers begin to multiply. Some of them have their news- 
papers before they are even founded. It still sometimes 
occurs that the government gives up a large stretch of terri- 
tory to an invasion of immigrants. At a given signal they 
hasten thither, fall upon it, and each bit of land belongs to 
the first occupant. That very evening or the next morning, on 
the plain where wagons and tents vaguely indicate the outline 
of a city, you will always find a liquor saloon, a postofifice, 
a church, and a newspaper ! 

Who knows that these wagons and tents are not the begin- 
ning of a Minneapolis, a St. Paul, a Chicago? Who knows 
that in twenty-five years this town will not have a hundred 
thousand, two hundred thousand inhabitants, and the news- 



134 OUTRE-MER 

paper as many readers? The insignificance of a beginning 
never frightens an American who is planning for business. 
Just as in meditating on the future of a business enterprise, 
there is no possibility of extension which does not occur to 
him, so no mediocrity disheartens him. He has before him 
too many examples of gigantic results attained from very small 
and humble beginnings. The greatest railway in the United 
States, the Central Pacific, was founded by four men almost 
without resources, two of whom were small shopkeepers in 
'Frisco. They built the first sections of the line, mile by mile, 
without money to go forward except bit by bit. Legend has 
it that in certain cases they were obliged to lay the rails with 
their own hands ! 

While I am submitting these very general reflections to my 
companion, as we pass through the halls, I observe a number 
of men, nearly all young, bent over their desks and writing with 
that absorbed attention which speaks again of "hard work," 
the faculty of giving all one's powers to the present duty. 
Others are receiving despatches which they immediately trans- 
mit on writing-machines. There is none of that club atmos- 
phere which makes the charm of Parisian editorial rooms. At 
this hour, over there, the paper is nearly ready, and even while 
the last touches are being added they talk.; they smoke ; they 
play cards, dominoes, cup and ball. Here in this precocious 
news-factory leisure is wanting, and the power to enjoy leisure. 

To appreciate the difference between the two editorial of- 
fices, one must set over against one another the two personali- 
ties of the French and the American reporter. The principal 
quality of the former is to be witty and clever. His articles 
are signed, and, in consequence, his literary self-consciousness 
is always somewhat mingled with the notes to which he makes 
a point of giving his own peculiar touch. You know him as 
mocking or sarcastic, caustic or pathetic. He is an artist even 
in his work of ephemeral statement, and his best successes are 



BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 135 

most generally in a sort of picturesque chit-chat. He has a 
certain impressionism, and you will find in his " copy " some- 
thing of the methods of the best writers of the day. The 
American reporter remains unknown, even when he gives to 
his journal news, to obtain which has cost him prodigies of 
shrewdness and energy. As if to show him that the important 
matter is not the quality of his phrases, but that of the facts 
he brings, he is paid by the word. There is in him something 
of the man of action, and something of the detective. Sensa- 
tional novels naturally take for their hero this personage, whose 
master virtue is strength of will. He must always be ready to 
set out for the most remote countries, where he will be obliged 
to play the part of explorer, and just as ready to descend 
to the lowest social stratum, where he will need to act as 
policeman. 

In this strenuous school he may, if he has the gift, become 
a writer of the first order. Richard Harding Davis, the creator 
of Gallegher and Van Bibber, is a case in point. A man who 
is himself a judge of style, having an extraordinary faculty for 
language in his letters and public utterances — Bismarck — 
goes so far as to insist that reporting, as Americans understand 
it, is the best school for a man of letters who desires to picture 
the movement of life. The opinion is of the order of those 
uttered by the Emperor at St. Helena, very partial and full of 
misunderstanding of the character of literary thought. It was 
worth citing ; for it is very true that those improvised, almost 
telegraphic, paragraphs, in which the fact appears in its strong 
immediate clearness, often stand out in a relief which art cannot 
equal. But it is an unconscious relief, over which the reporter 
has had no anxiety. His anxiety is to be exact, and every means 
is good that will secure accuracy. Many people are indignant 
at his methods, and sometimes they are not wrong. Last sum- 
mer I was passing through Beverly, near Boston, at the time 
of the death of one of the most distinguished officers of the 



136 OUTRE-MER 

Federal army. The corpse was to be carried to Baltimore, 
and a funeral service was first celebrated in the little village 
church. In the midst of the ceremony, a young man entered, 
drew near to the coffin, gently raised the pall, tapped the cover 
with his finger, and said softly : — 

" Steel, not wood." 

Then he disappeared, in the midst of universal surprise ; it 
was a reporter. 

These ruthless audacities of research are, however, performed 
with a certain simplicity, almost ingenuousness. I have read 
many " interviews " and many personal paragraphs, and, short 
as has been my time in America, I could count those which 
have in them anything wounding or even one of those humors 
of the pen so habitual among the most insignificant paragrapher 
of the boulevards. This sort of innocence of a press so auda- 
cious in its investigations is explained, I think, first, by the 
professional character of the reporter, and next, if I may so 
speak, by that of the reader. The reporter holds it to be his 
duty to give the reader the greatest possible number of facts. 
The reader considers it his right to have these facts. In the 
superabundance of positive details the place reserved for each 
personality is too short to admit of an ill-natured insinuation. 
The reporter no more has time to point an epigram than the 
detective to whom I but now compared him has time to make a 
practical joke upon the one he is questioning. He is much more 
occupied in discovering " head-lines," a collection of which 
would constitute the most humorous chapter of a journey to 
the United States. Just now, on entering the room of the 
newspaper reserved for necrologies, where all the biographies 
of celebrated hving men are ranged in pigeonholes, I saw upon 
the table a proof of an article prepared for a celebrated singer 
who, at the moment, was very ill, with this " heading " : " The 
crystal voice is broken. The bird will sing no more." 

As the charming woman got better, the article joined the 



BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 137 

thousands of similar paragraphs which are waiting their turn 
among proofs of pictures representing buildings and men. 

" Buildings may burn and men may die," said my guide, philo- 
sophically. Seeing me amused by the fancifulness of these titles, 
he drew my attention to one which would appear on the morrow 
— the most surprising one, perhaps, which I have seen — " Jerked 
to Jesus." It was the account of the hanging of a negro, a 
" colored gentleman," for " the usual crime," as they euphe- 
mistically say here, that of having outraged a white woman. 
He repented on the eve of his execution and died Christianly. 
I am not sure that the reporter who summed up this death in 
these three sensational words is not himself a believer, who/ 
distinctly saw in this event the entrance of a ransomed soul\ 
into paradise. Certainly, thousands of plain readers will do so 
by the mere force of this announcement. What would be the 
head-Hnes if the matter in hand was not so vulgar an event as 
this, but the arrival or departure of a pugilist, or his meeting i 
with another prize-fighter ? -^ 

"That is the incident which most swells the circulation of a- 
paper," said my companion. "Why not?" he added; "we 
Anglo-Saxons love a ' fight.' We like it in politics, and this is 
why we must always see two ' leaders ' facing one another. 
We like it in our enterprises, and that is why I can never be 
content until I have made my paper the first in the United 
States. We like it even when it is only a question of fisticuffs. 
And I think our race will lose something the day when we are 
too nearly cured of the latter. It will take time for that," 
he added, with a smile that lighted up his countenance — a 
smile in which I found, as among many business men of this 
country, a little of the square solidity of the bull-dog. I am 
not far from thinking, with him, that there is, in fact, an instinc- 
tive education in the national amusements, ferocious as they 
seem to be. Certainly, all that teaches the calculated ardor of 
attack and the invincible self-restraint of resistance is useful to 



138 OUTRE-MER 

men destined to live in a country where they everywhere meet 
so intense an energy that, in ten years, this newspaper building, 
these machines, the very paper itself, will be things of the 
past, slow, unformed, behind the times. This is what a New 
Yorker replied to my utterance of apprehension with regard to 
crossing by the Brooklyn Bridge: — 

" It is not possible that it will not fall some day," I said. 

" Well," said he, " between now and then we shall have 
built another, and this one will be out of fashion." 

I went by one of the great Western lines, in company of one 
of the directors, to St. Paul and Minneapolis. My object in 
visiting the city that bears the name of the great apostle was 
to pay my respects to its archbishop, Monsignor Ireland, the 
most eloquent of the prelates who in these days are turning 
the thought of the Church toward social problems. There is 
something of Savonarola in the long, rugged face of this priest, 
who finds in every kind of assembly an opportunity for giving 
the word of life to the people. He said to me one day: — 

"The Americans have this advantage : that people are never 
surprised to see us in any sort of gathering. You could hardly 
picture to yourself Monsignor of Paris at a banquet of the 
city drainage department. It would be in staying away that I 
should cause surprise. Such things give us many opportuni- 
ties for making Catholicism understood." 

And whatever the form under which Catholicism presents 
itself, with whatever large magnificence of character, one needs 
still to have read one of his sermons in order to understand — 
to feel, rather — its vast significance. " The Church and the 
age ! the age and the Church ! Let us bring them together in 
closest union. Their pulses beat in unison. The God of 
humanity is working in the age : the God of revelation is work- 
ing in the Church. It is the same God and the same spirit." 

And again : " What ! our Church, the Church of the living 



BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 139 

God, the Church of ten thousand victories over heathens and 
barbarians, over false philosophies and heresies, over defiant 
kings and turbulent peoples, — the great, charitable, liberal 
Church, athirst for virtue, ahungered for justice, — shall she 
quail before the nineteenth century? Shall she fear any 
century whatsoever? " 

What words ! and those who are Christians by desire, as I 
am, whose name is legion, how shall they not thrill to hear 
them sounding forth over the modern world and over their 
own hearts? The time has come when Christianity must 
accept all of Science and all of Democracy, under penalty of 
seeing herself forsaken by too many souls. She must perforce 
construct a channel for these two springs, and who knows 
whether the archbishop of St. Paul is not the workman pre- 
destined to this task? Who knows whether he is not some day 
to utter words like these from a yet higher place? There is 
already one American cardinal, and why should there not soon 
be two? Why should not a pope issue from this free nation, 
in which the heads of the Church have become what the first 
apostles were — men close to the heart of the people, to those 
humble hearts in which so many irrepressible ideas are now 
fermenting? These people believe their ideas to be con- 
trary to the teachings of Christ. Prove to them, prove to us, 
that they are not so, and that we may all retain the Ideal by 
which our fathers lived, without sacrificing any of those ideals 
which throb in us ! What a work for a fisher of souls of this 
great race, and how this modern world, so sick of the nega- 
tions that vex its incomplete knowledge, will spring to meet 
the Church when many of its priests speak the language that 
this one speaks ! In the shipwreck of European civilization, 
in the tide of barbarity which militarism and socialism are 
bringing upon it, here is the light toward which to steer. It 
will not be a small part of this country's glory that this guid- 
ing light was kindled here. 



140 OUTRE-MER 

I was destined to meet the archbishop later, in New York, 
and receive the same impression of his person that his ser- 
mons had made upon me. This time, while I was on the 
way to St. Paul to seek him, in the modest "office " which 
he occupies under the shadow of his cathedral, he was at Bal- 
timore, delivering one of his fiery harangues at Cardinal Gib- 
bons's jubilee. Still I did not regret the long excursion — I 
call it long, in memory of my French habits. Fourteen hours 
in a railway car do not count in America. I was able to feast 
my eyes, during this long journey, with the sight of the most 
psychological landscape which I have seen in my wandering 
life; a "business " landscape, if one may so speak, so entirely 
has the imprint of speculation been stamped upon all the 
banks of the Mississippi, the river celebrated by Chateau- 
briand and Longfellow. 

American energy has made this vast watercourse the natural 
vehicle of an enormous traffic. The " Father of Waters " has 
become a good-natured and docile servant, indefatigably 
transporting the logs cut far away to the North, beyond St. 
Paul and Minneapolis, by woodmen who have the large blue 
eyes and blond rosy faces of good-natured giants. They are 
immigrants from Sweden and Norway, who have come, to the 
number of six hundred thousand, in the last ten years ! 

Great rafts of huge tree-trunks glide along with the flowing 
water, each one marked with a colored sign, which tells its 
destination. The water, by turns green and transparent or 
muddy and yellow, bears upon its bosom so many islands that 
you can never distinguish the other shore. One side of the 
stream is furrowed with lines of towboats, which are indefat- 
igablv and incessantly hastening to transport the cattle and 
grain of this mysterious, inexhaustible West. Vet it must one 
day be exhausted, and one asks oneself what will become of 
this people when they no longer have this immense reservoir 
to draw from. 



BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 141 

Meantime it was a scene of extraordinary activity, even 
after Chicago and New York. The private car in which we 
travelled had almost immediately been given its special 
engine. The little extra train was perpetually obliged to 
switch off to let the regular trains pass by, — cattle trains 
almost exclusively. Our car, which is that used by the pres- 
ident of the road on his travels, is not ordered with special 
luxury, although, with its two sleeping-rooms, drawing-room, 
dining-room, kitchen, and bath, it is a veritable house on 
wheels, in which you might pass weeks and hardly know 
that you were travelling. For that matter, how many people 
never travel in any other way ! While at Newport, I heard a 
young woman planning a similar journey. She was to take 
her guests in her private car, and her sole regret was that the 
station at Chicago was too noisy for a long sojourn. The 
chief object of having a private car is the avoidance of hotels. 
If, in the course of one of these fifteen hundred mile journeys, 
the inhabitant of the private car happens to fall ill, a halt is 
called until he gets well. This is the case with a politician 
of my acquaintance, whom his doctor is treating for typhoid 
fever, in a car of this kind, temporarily shunted on one of 
the side tracks of some small Colorado town. Orders have 
been given for the engines not to whistle when they approach 
the place. Private cars are so numerous that such an incident 
passes without notice. 

The car in which I am travelling is a sort of office on 
wheels, intended to facilitate the labors of the president and 
directors, who desire to see with their own eyes how things 
are going on their road. Here again I perceive the same 
identification of the great business enterprises of America, 
with certain individuals, which I had already observed in the 
case of the newspapers. Almost all the great railroads, like 
this one, are under the control of a very small number of 
individuals. In certain cases a single man owns the majority 



142 OUTRE-MER 

of the stock. In other cases, the entire stock is divided be- 
tween four or five capitalists. At other times, the interests 
' represented by a group of capitalists are so great that the 
remainder of the stockholders prefer to leave them entirely 
! free in the direction of the enterprise. Hence results that 
character of autocracy in directing boards, which Mr. Bryce 
so justly pointed out as the unique feature of American rail- 
ways. Those who manage them are their absolute masters. 

The necessity of direct supervision is another consequence 
of this state of things. For that matter, competition is too 
fierce to admit of that anonymity of routine administration of 
which old Europe is so fond. An American railway represents 
too many living interests. It is not merely a more rapid 
means of communication, side by side with roads and canals, 
for example. In nearly all the States it is the only means of 
communication. 

It not only runs between two existing cities, connecting 
them by a shorter line, it is itself the creator of cities. Be- 
tween Chicago and St. Paul a score of them have sprung into 
existence, of which the station was the natal germ. Stores 
' ' were opened forthe benefit of the employees, then other shops 
for the benefit of the first shopkeepers. If there is a mine in 
the neighborhood, or the hope of a mine, grazing, or the pos- 
sibility of grazing, immigrants come in flocks. If any natural 
feature, such as a waterfall, permits a factory, industries are 
established. Minneapolis had no other origin. The railway 
P-issed the place. The falls of the Mississippi lent themselves 
to a series of incomparable mills, and this was the starting- 
point of one of the future capitals of the world. 

One must not weary of the statistics which, as it were, make 
evident this astounding productiveness. Minneapolis, liter- 
ally founded but yesterday, in which no man now forty years 
old can have been born, occupies to-day, according to popu- 
lation, the one hundred and twenty-first place among the cities 



BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 143 

of the whole world. It follows immediately after the Hague, 
standing before Trieste or Toulouse or Seville or Genoa or 
Florence or Venice or Havre or Bologna or Rouen or Stras- 
burg. 

It is not merely a fantastic paradox that brings these antique 
names into juxtaposition with this name so barbaric in origin 

— it is derived from a G reek and ^- Sioux word, and so 
symbolical. A total rearrangement of the scheme of history 
is shown in such unlooked-for displacements of the centres 
of human activity. If we had not suffered the extinction 
of our sense of the mystery which is hidden in all reality, — 
even in coarse and vulgar reality, when it is fruitful to such 
a degree as this, — we should recognize in it one of the 
miracles of an epoch in which nothing except the perspec- 
tive of age is wanting to thrill us through with admiration ! 

To the business man, the unconscious worker of this mira- 
cle, the establishment of a railway is simply a question of 
speculation. According as these seeds of cities, scattered 
thus from the funnel of an engine with the cinders and the 
sparks, spring up or prove abortive, the surrounding district 
will bring in millions of dollars or nothing. In most cases 
the company has received its lands free, without laying out 
a cent. Thus Congress granted thirteen millions of acres to 
the Union Pacific, six millions to the Kansas Pacific, twelve 
millions to the Central Pacific, forty-seven millions to the 
Northern Pacific, forty-two millions to the Atlantic and Pa- 
cific. Whatever these lands may become worth, so much will 
the railroad be worth. It makes them fruitful, and they en- 
rich it in return. It overlays them with an alluvium of 
humanity, and this will tenfold, a hundredfold, enhance their 
value to it. 

Figures like these multiply themselves in the minds of the 
"magnates" — so the great "railroad men " are called here 

— as they look abroad from their private cars. They see a 



144 OUTRE-MER 

new city blocking itself out, pushing out in lines of cheap 
wooden houses, brought out in numbered sections and set 
down on the surface of the ground. They ask themselves how 
and when this embryo will come to life, grow, develop itself; 
and then they return to the comfort of the "rockers " of their 
moving drawing-rooms, colossal plans seething in their minds 
the while. Each one of them is accustomed to a business 
sphere as wide as that of a cabinet minister. He has already 
made cities; he has made vast regions. All the qualities of a 
great diplomatist have been necessary that he should carry on 
the struggle, to-day against a rival company, to-morrow against 
the governor of a State. He has conducted battles, formed 
leagues. For business to go on as it does he must needs have 
marshalled thousands of men into ranks, chosen the most 
able among them, commanded them as Napoleon commanded 
his officers and soldiers. 

It is a power by no means decorative and honorary, 
but real, active, working, with an immediate responsibility 
held in check by success or the want of success. These 
men are princes in the feudal sense of the word, and they 
may generally pride themselves on having conquered their 
principality for themselves. They can look back twenty years 
and see themselves small shopkeepers, coal-dealers, hotel ser- 
vants, brakemen. Such a life has its poetry, — not indeed 
that which poets have sung, but poetry all the same, — and it 
has its beauty, of the kind that Balzac would have loved. 

The locomotive keeps on its way while these reflections 
beset me, and the landscape unrolls before our eyes. Re- 
mains of forests border the Mississippi, brilliant now with 
the hues of autumn. The magnificence of the red tones, their 
depth, their solidity, almost warm the heart. Once, in the 
twilight, a part of the forest was burning upon the horizon. 
A colossal flame curled up, illumining a range of mountains. 



BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 145 

while the waters of the river, that reflected the sunset sky, 
became adorable with rose and violet. For a few moments 
invincible nature has its revenge and abolishes industry. In 
the light of this suddenly transfigured landscape, I picture to 
myself what this part of America must have been fifty years 
ago, when trappers and Indians were in conflict on these fields 
and in the woods along this river, which Longfellow has 
sung : — 

" Men whose lives glided on \\ke rivers that water the woodlands, 
Darkened by shadows of earth, but reflecting the image of heaven." 

It is in such scenes as this that one should read the now 
old-fashioned romances of Fenimore Cooper, which in our 
youth charmed us all, beyond the seas. I have just reread one 
of the most celebrated, T/ie Patlifinder. Its style is in- 
different, the plot is constructed of childishly improbable 
events. The characters lack analysis and depth. And yet 
the book possesses the first of all the virtues of a romance, — 
credibility. This is due, in spite of its faults, to the evident 
good faith with which the various characters are drawn, es- 
pecially that of the guide, Leather-Stocking, who has passed 
into legend even in Europe. 

Under all the weaknesses of style and composition,- one 
feels, as in the Scottish chronicles of Walter Scott, the reality 
of local traditions collected at their very source. These 
things cannot be imitated, and they never grow old. Behind 
the imaginary story you perceive nature as it once was and 
the American of the last century, on the eve of the War of 
Independence, living all in the moral domain, with none of 
the industrialism which now reigns over the whole scene. 

That was a unique period, when the Puritan and this wild 
nature came in contact, and its real hero was Washington. 
England was close at hand, and the blood of its sons, emi- 
grants to this new continent, had not undergone the prodig- 



146 OUTRE-MER 

ious intermingling which has now transformed it. Cooper's 
romances show the English rigidity of the American of that 
day, and they also show the strenuousness of the war with the 
Indians, side by side with the marvellous animal wealth of the 
country now so despoiled of its large and small game. They 
show the beginnings of the struggle with nature, which has 
now been not only conquered, but violated and brutalized. 

The reading of these books shows that the United States had 
already exhausted an entire civilization — that of the pioneers 
and hunters — before producing that of to-day. This new 
nation has lived more in its one hundred years than all Europe 
since the Renascence. Between the social condition de- 
scribed by this Pathfinder, and that of which 1 am trying 
to distinguish a few elements, there is assuredly more differ- 
ence than between the France of the seventeenth century and 
that of our day, notwithstanding the upheavals of our Revo- ' 
lution. The plasticity of this singular country is such that 
we may predict as great differences between the civilization 
of this year of the Chicago Exposition and that of 1993; only 
the sunset, the water of the river, and the sky will have re- 
mained the same as to-night and as a hundred years ago. The 
same stars will flash out overhead, and the same moon will 
rise, bathing the vast, pale river and the dark forests. But 
will it still light up files of trains such as rush past ours, fly- 
ing eastward, carrying cattle and wheat, wheat and cattle, — 
and money, always and ever money, to swell the enormous 
fortunes destined some day to be shed abroad in the form of 
dowry over some ruined palace of Italy, some impoverished 
historic castle of England or of France? 

St. Paul, where I arrive on a Sunday morning, is a huge 
chaotic city, in part composed of the same wooden houses 
squat upon the ground which are found in the infant cities 
along the railway. But along a sort of macadamized terrace 



BUSINESS MEX AND BUSINESS SCENES 147 

which overlooks the Mississippi, stand out a succession of 
beautiful stone houses, not very high, of good architecture. 
They form a whole street of private houses, like those in the 
neighborhood of Hyde Park or the Avenue du Bois. 

The mere exterior of these houses betrays in the men who 
built them, who are all business men of this place, that habit 
of ostentatious expenditure that seems to be so contrary to the 
greed for wealth everywhere stamped upon the hard surface of 
this country. The contradiction is only apparent. The 
American loves to "make a dollar," as they say; but he is not 
tenacious of it. What he most cares for in the conquest of 
wealth is the excitement of activity, self-aflfirmation, and he 
afifirms himself quite as much, if not more, by the lavish 
ostentation of his expenditure. 

This ostentation is sometimes very barbaric. It is often 
very intelligent. Of this I have convinced myself by a visit 
to one of the houses on "Summit Avenue," the elegant street 
of this rough-hewn St. Paul. The gallery of paintings which 
it contains is mentioned in the guide-books. It belongs to 
the president of one of the great Western railways, a " self- 
made man," if ever there was one. All who knew him twenty- 
five years ago remember him as a small commercial employee. 
After that he went into the selling of coal, and the freighting 
of boats. The latter enterprise made him acquainted de visit 
with the wealth of Montana and North Dakota. A railway 
which had been begun in these regions was on the point of 
failure. He bought the ruined line. To-day, thanks to con- 
tracts that he was wise enough to make, by a series of trans- 
shipments, this line has a through service from Buffalo to 
Japan. This is the finished type of a great American busi- 
ness enterprise, with its foundations laid in minute personal 
experience and its results expanded by bold combinations to 
the verge of unreality. 

The interior appointments of this man's house are not less 



148 OUTRE-MER 

typical. Pictures, pictures everywhere. Corots of the highest 
beauty, among others the Biblis which figured at the Secretan 
sale, Troyons, Decamps, a colossal Courbet, the Convidsion- 
naires of Delacroix, and a view of the coast of Morocco, before 
which I stood long, as in a dream. I saw this canvas years 
ago, I have sought for it since in hundreds of public and 
private museums, finding no book which could inform me who 
was its present possessor, and I find it here ! 

It is a little narrow beach, a rim of pebbly strand at the 
foot of a steep cliff. Some Moors are rapidly making off with 
a large bark. The village, a nest of pirates, shows white, 
high up in a cleft of the hill. This collection of hovels 
huddled in this lonely cranny, the wildness of the beach, the 
haste of the sailors, the freedom of the great sea, intensely 
blue under a burning sun, all sperk of adventure, surprise, 
danger. There is realism and romanticism, brilliant color 
and dramatic action in this picture by a thoughtful and 
enthusiastic artist, always seeking for a subject of complex 
beauty, in which the vagueness of a tragic mystery should be 
mingled with splendor of execution. 

What ground has this canvas covered between the painter's 
studio and the gallery of a millionaire of the Western frontier ! 
So I saw in Baltimore, in the collection of the "magnate" of 
another railroad, the complete series of Barye pictures, a 
"Christ asleep in the storm" by Delacroix, with an amazing 
marine piece, a sea-green surf, wild and boisterous, under 
a sky livid with violet hues. And Fromentins and Daubignys, 
other Corots, Troyons, Decamps, Bonnats, — • all the glory of 
France ! What sentiment impels these wealthy speculators 
to gather into their own homes art treasures most foreign 
to all that has been the business and passion of their whole 
life? 

I seem to discern here, first of all, traces of that dream of 
culture, that longing for intellectual leisure, which always 



BUSINESS MEN AND T5LTSINESS SCENES 149 

impresses me in persons thus saturated with practical energy. 
I also recognize in it a purpose of good citizenship. They 
have a very particular sort of love for the city in which they 
live, which they have seen growing up, which they have some- 
times even seen born, and which they desire to see in posses- 
sion of all excellent things. A museum is such a thing, and 
they give her one in their own house. Almost always the • 
wills of these great men contain a clause which proves how 
deep and widespread is the idea that "millions" bring civic 
duty in their train. They give five hundred thousand dollars 
to endow a library, a university, a museum for their city. 
When such a one dies without having taken steps of this kind, 
universal blame overshadows his memory. 

For this reason every one of these industrial towns is proud 
of its millionaires. I'he most ignorant coachman will point 
you to their houses, give you the amount of their fortunes, 
call them by their nicknames. It is understood that munici- 
pal solidarity unites these potentates of the dollar to their 
fellow-citizens of their own city. In fact, this unity of inter- 
ests shows itself daily, materially. The same Mr. Chauncey 
Depew whose remarks I have before quoted said to a reporter 
these significant words: — 

"A railway president in the United States is a great servant 
of the people. He has under his orders twenty or thirty 
thousand men, who represent a hundred thousand, sometimes 
two hundred thousand mouths to fill; he holds in his hands 
not merely the physical well-being, but the mental and moral 
well-being of this multitude. He cannot do everything, nor 
content everybody. But he can do much, and when he does 
his best you will not find another man in a ' prominent posi- 
tion ' who does more for the comfort and good citizenship 
of large communities." 

This warm civic ardor is one of the virtues of the American 
business man of which we are least aware. With reservations 



150 OUTRE-MER 

on the side of truth and that of "humbug," I believe it to 
be the most sincere. 

With eyes dazzled by the luminous poetry of Delacroix's 
picture, I had some difihculty, on the way from St. Paul to 
Minneapolis, in discerning the meaning of the landscape 
which lies between the two cities. It is, however, most 
expressive. The few miles of ground which separate them 
are divided off into nearly equal lots, and everywhere you may 
see the inscription "For Sale," indefinitely multiplied. In 
fifty years the suburbs of the "Twin Cities of the West" — 
as they call them here — will meet. 

Soon the wooden houses begin to appear, then brick ones. 
This is Minneapolis. Although the earlier houses are scat- 
tered, like farms upon a mountain side, the streets are already 
laid out and numbered. An electric tramway serves these 
districts, which, notwithstanding the infrequent houses, con- 
form to the ideal plan. It is like a design of a colossal city 
traced beforehand on the very ground, planned, imagined, 
estimated rather, its future needs to be served by this electri- 
city. The sewers are dug, the fountains are playing, the 
ground is drained It lacks only inhabitants. 

Of these, however, there are a hundred and sixty-five thou- 
sand in the built-up quarters, which form but a very small 
portion of the city prospected by the business men of Minne- 
apolis. Chicago counts more than a million souls, and they 
have not the slightest doubt that their city will outrank 
Chicago. They have taken precautions to that end, and have 
bought all that they can buy of the adjoining land, dividing it 
up for sale lot by lot. They have given the vital organ to 
these yet-to-be-built suburbs, — the facility of rapid transit, 
which permits each workingman to have his little house, — and 
they are waiting, with a strength of hope so peculiarly Ameri- 
can, occupied meanwhile with other speculations, which will 



BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 151 

compensate them for the failure of this one, in the event — to 
them improbable — of this one making shipwreck. 

One of the great speculators of Minneapolis, he perhaps 
who from the first day has most strongly believed in the future 
of this city, takes me in his electric car — a private electric 
car; where else shall we iind a whim like this? He proposes 
to show me that he and his friends have foreseen not merely 
the material greatness of Minneapolis, but have thought of its 
artistic life. 

The car slips along the wire with frightful speed. It has 
not to stop for passengers. We have left the built-up quar- 
ters, and almost immediately v/e pass the districts yet to be 
built, with their imaginary streets, and their placards of " For 
Sale " erected on posts. These placards are so numerous that 
the suburb resembles the beds of a botanic garden destined 
for the inhabitants of Brobdingnag. The car now skirts a 
diminutive lake, whose bluish waters shimmer between slim 
young trees. They have cut down, destroyed, burned, the 
primitive forest, and this timid attempt at replantation seems 
all the more to denude the landscape. 

We reach a bit of better preserved woodland, which forms 
the green border of a second lake. On the shore is one of 
the most singular music halls that it has ever been given me 
to see. Benches rise up in tiers, facing the lake. Above 
they are divided into boxes; below they form a uniform 
parterre. Wooden tables in these boxes and on the parterre 
remind me that in Minneapolis the principal immigration is 
Germanic. This place is evidently arranged for the folk of 
the beer garden, — Germans, Swiss, Danes, Norwegians. A 
huge raft is moored opposite the theatre, bearing a rostrum for 
the orchestra. Concerts are given here on fine summer nights, 
and when the public requests it the raft puts out into the 
lake, to add the charm of distance to the pieces played. This 
democratic adaptation of the dreams of King Louis of Bavaria 



152 OUTRE-MER 

costs the humble folk who enjoy it ten cents for the tramway 
and twenty-five cents for entrance — ^ no doubt "with ex- 
penses," as the cafe-concert advertisements say! 

All America shows in this place. The orchestra is composed 
of good artists, who will be better from year to year with the 
increasing wealth of the city. The view is exquisite on this 
autumnal morning, veiled in haze above the yellowing trees and 
the violet water. What must it be by moonlight, on the soft 
nights of June? The idea is a fine one, a dainty caprice of 
popular enjoyment. And it all has for its first principle a tram- 
way speculation, which in turn rests on a speculation in land ! 

The most humble realism, most devoted to the minute 
^'^observation of facts, joined to an audacity of imagination 
which never flinches, which grafts projects upon projects, 
which continually inflates enterprises already enormous, which 
rises to more and more colossal combinations, — the most 
ardent, most implacable individualism, as of a nobler sort of 
beast of prey, devouring all the life around it, — or, if you 
will, the tremendous rush of an overflowing river, absorbing 
all waters, inundating all lands, sweeping over a country rav- 
aged by its insatiable floods; and with all this a generosity 
that never reckons, a magnanimity of civic passion that lav- 
ishes millions in disinterested works, that expends itself in 
tireless sacrifices for the common country; a plebeianism of 
most recent origin, a modesty, often a meanness of birth, 
family, education, powerless, it would seem, to mitigate the 
necessity of bread-winning toil; and with it all the magnifi- 
cence and ostentation of grand seigneurs, a taste for art, a 
large understanding of intelligent luxury, a natural facility in 
the management of the tremendous fortunes acquired but yes- 
terday; such are the contradictory characteristics which even 
a superficial analysis discovers in the complex figure of the 
American business man. 



BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 153 

Simply to note them in this brief summary serves to show ") 
me that these traits are also those of the whole race, and in the / 
lineaments of the potentate who reigns master over his rail- /^ 
way, his factory, his newspaper, his mine, I recognize the \ 
early colonist, with the moral lineaments which fortune has -^ 
been powerless to change. 

This colonist came here a hundred years ago, fifty years 
ago, to find a foothold in this still new world, and he has been 
forced to carry on the most open struggle, the least softened 
by social conventions, — a struggle against people, against 
nature, against himself, His flesh rebelled against the severi- 
ties of the first years. The prairie was hostile. The neigh- 
bors were severe, dangerous, merciless. The necessity of 
action forced the man to observe and to accept no ideas that 
were not clear and precise. This inexorable education cured 
him of phrases, formulae, prejudices, and inaccuracies. So 
much for the realism. 

But the colonist's struggle had all possibilities before it. 
Expatriations of this sort are not to be explained without 
something of that madness of hope which desperate men find 
in themselves in supreme moments, when the whole soul faces 
about under a blow which leaves to it nothing of the past. 
And once at this point, everything contributed to fan the 
fever of hope in the exile's breast, — the incredibly fertile 
soil, the mysterious gold and silver mines always to be discov- 
ered, the prairie, absurdly rich in game, the indestructible 
forests, and the daily example of gigantic fortunes amassed in 
a few years. So much for imagination. 

And still the influx of immigrants continued to be so 
numerous, the struggle for life became so violent in this 
horde of adventurers, — all men of poverty and energy, — 
justice was executed in so summary a fashion, that it was 
necessary indeed to have recourse to Faustreclit, that right 
of the fist wiiich was the principle of order in the German 



154 OUTRE-MER 

Middle Ages. Lynching is its last relic. So much for 
individualism. 

On the other hand, these same colonists found in this severe 
existence a renewal of their personality. I'hey made for 
themselves a future that had no past, and experienced a pas- 
sionate gratitude to the free country which had permitted the 
new beginning. This is the origin of American patriotism, 
so different from ours. Tradition does not enter into it, since 
the men, except a number so small that it may be counted, 
have their traditions elsewhere. What they love in this new 
country is precisely that it is new. They themselves create 
its tradition. They are ancestors, and they know it. So 
much for the glorification of civism. 

Finally, these colonists were all plebeians, or were con- 
strained to become such, since they must work with their 
hands. Only, the vast extent of their domains, the fact that 
they were dependent on no one, their consciousness of a re- 
generated manhood, the habit of unchecked liberty to 
originate, all conspired to exalt in them that pride which 
the humblest American born in the country naturally mani- 
fests. 

Look well at this; the business man is no other than this 
colonist, broadened, developed, enkirged. Never was the 
law of heredity more visible than here, in this sublimated 
transposition, if one may so speak. All the soul of the pioneer 
of the early days appears again in the enterprises and caprices 
of these millionaires; and as the same soul continues to stir 
in the poor American who has not conquered destiny, a moral 
likeness is established between the poorest and the most pros- 
perous, a close and profound resemblance, which makes the 
true coherence of this country. It is by this singular iden- 
tity that it remains always one, in spite of many causes cease- 
lessly working to disintegrate it. 

These business men, who are occupied with constructing a 



BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 155 

whole Western civilization out of entirely foreign elements, 
naturally make it in the image of the American character. 
Through them the national consciousness projects itself in 
towns and enterprises so entirely alike that travellers com- 
plain of it. They are all agreed in reproaching this country 
for its cruel monotony. Some humorist or other has compared 
American things to hothouse strawberries, big as apricots, 
red as roses, and with no taste. 

If there is any truth in this epigram, it is the fault of the 
business men. Applying to all products everywhere the same 
method of indefinite increase, multiplying the workman by the 
machine, continually substituting hasty wholesale work for the 
individual and delicate task, they have, in fact, banished 
the picturesque from their republic. All these great cities, 
these great buildings, these great bridges, these great hotels, 
are alike. But what we have to ask of these things is not an 
artistic impression, but an authentic report of the profound 
forces of American life, and this document must be added to 
the others, to confirm and complete them. 

The particular feature manifested by business men in all 
the enterprises of which these cities and landscapes are the 
rude symbol, is in fact the same which the women manifest 
in their elegance and their culture, the same that New York 
society manifests in its extravagance, amusements, conversa- 
tion, that New York streets manifest at a first glance, — a 
feature so characteristic as to be national. It is a habit, 
unique and unvarying, a habit carried to such an extreme 
as to become the abuse of a single human power, — that of 
will. It is obviously the very pivot of the machine, to 
which everything else is subordinated. Observe some of 
these great business men, after having closely studied their 
work; you will soon discover that even their physical powers, 
usually very robust, are entirely bent in this direction. 
Whether they are thirty years old, or forty, or fifty, their one 



156 OUTRE-MER 

ideal is "hard work," intense toil, which they demand of their 
employees as much as of themselves. I am told that it needs 
months to train English workmen — and they are the toughest 
in Europe — to the strenuous application habitual in Ameri- 
can shops. 

The employer is himself in his ofifice from the earliest 
morning hour, and does not leave it until the latest in the 
afternoon. Most generally his only refreshment during this 
long period is two sandwiches and half a dozen oysters from 
a neighboring bar. After years of such toil his constitution, 
however strong it may be, is seriously undermined. He is 
obliged to stop. The kind of rest which his physicians pre- 
scribe for him is a sufficient indication of the nature and 
intensity of his fatigue. It requires six months of travel, 
usually by sea, to patch up the overwrought, almost shattered, 
machine. 

Those who do not succumb carry the marks of immense 
fatigue borne with immense spirit. They are giants; their 
square-built frames have grown heavy by long sittings in their 
offices, their faces are gray from exhausted vitality. The 
expression of their countenances reveals a mind so continually 
on the strain that it can no longer enjoy recreation. 

Conversing with them, you find it explained why the papers 
are continually announcing the sudden death of some million- 
aire, struck down in his office, in a boat's cabin, or a railway 
car. The words "heart disease" usually accompany the 
death notice; it is a commentary that shows you the human 
machine utterly worn out by the incessant expenditure of ner- 
vous force. These manipulators of dollars are, in short, the 
heroes of modern times, in whom the power of attack and 
resistance is analogous, under very different forms, to the 
power of attack and resistance of an old soldier of the Em- 
peror. They die of it, after having lived by it, and having 
lived by it alone. 



I 



BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 157 

This is the greatness and it is the limit of this civilization. 
Intellectual life is in the background, and in the background 
also are the sentimental and even the religious life. The life 
of purpose has sapped all the vigor of the individual. So 
much is it hypertrophied that it seems sometimes to work 
aimlessly and in a void. This is also the defect of the whole 
social system. You feel everywhere that the Americans have 
risen too superior to time, so that by a mysterious law they 
are doing nothing that is destined to endure. All the pomp 
of these Babel-like cities is destined to give way to something 
else. The vision of this is already foreseen. These machines 
are to give place to other machines, more simple or more 
complicated. In ten years these hotels, with their thousand 
pipes, their electric lights, their hot and cold water, their 
swift elevators, their extravagantly magnificent furniture, will 
have become "old-fashioned." Others will have taken their 
place. 

It is thus with everything, from writing-machines to for- 
tunes, and so on indefinitely, it would seem; unless, indeed, 
the America of workmen and speculators is itself to pass away, 
as the America of the pioneers has done, and frenzied enter- 
prise be succeeded by a civilization in which the central power 
will be not the conscious and calculating will, but instinct, 
habit, an inherited and disciplined nature. This final change 
is, in any case, far distant. You understand why, on study- 
ing a map of the United States and comparing the extent of 
its territory with the number of its inhabitants. Americans 
often indulge in the justified pleasantry of saying that if all 
France were set down in the midst of Texas, a good deal of 
Texas would stick out around the edges. It would be proper 
to add that this immense Texas has not three million inhabi- 
tants; Florida has not four hundred thousand, and it takes 
fourteen hours by railway to pass through it, from Lake Worth 
to Jacksonville. 



158 OUTRE-MER 

Thirty out of forty States are in a like condition. This is 
the secret of this civilization. It has not yet passed the 
period of conquest. Its immense originality lies in this, that 
its conquerors leaped with one bound to the refinement of the 
most advanced civilization. A like phenomenon has not 
elsewhere been seen, and it will never be seen again. This 
is the reason why the leaders in this unique conquest — the 
business men — do not resemble our brokers, laborers, manu- 
facturers, engineers; the reason why Chicago is not like Paris, 
or Minneapolis like Florence. I love best the cities of old 
Europe, but I admire most the business men of the New 
World. The work which they do by dint of sheer, unpre- 
meditated resolution is not equal to the work which has been 
elaborated with us for centuries, but the actual makers of this 
country are examples of a more vigorous humanity. 



VI 

THE LOWER ORDERS 
I. The Workingmen 

"Business is the labor of others," said a socialistic humor- 
ist, amending a celebrated witticism. The epigram is only 
half true in the United States, where the millionaires them- 
selves are overwhelmed with work, quite as much so as the 
most oppressed operatives on their railroads or in their mines. 
It is so far correct, that the conduct of these great enter- 
prises requires for its first element the toil of the laborer. 
Behind the capitalist, however intelligent he may be, however 
active and enterprising, there stands, therefore, theworkingman. 

Premising that America is, above all things, a democracy, 
this very personage is what constitutes its substructure. If 
the civilization of this country is to be changed again, as so 
often seems likely to be the case, it will change through the 
workingman, as the France of '89, which rested upon the 
peasant class, was changed by the peasant. From time to 
time, strikes, which in any other country would be called 
civil wars, seem in fact to presage one of those class conflicts 
of which the issue is never doubtful. Ever since there have 
been barbarians and civilized people, the more wretched have 
always vanquished the more fortunate when it came to the 
issue of battle. 

At other times, and with the exception of such moments of 
overstrained feeling, if you talk with laboring men, you will 
find them ev idently happy in their work, performing it well, 

159 



160 OUTRE-MER 

with much of the independence of free citizens in their 
rugged faces. They visibly have the calmness of energy, 
amidst all the to and fro of pistons, the whistling of leather 
straps, the screeching of steam, the panting of fly-wheels. The 
expenditure of personal force is so intelligently economized 
for them, so accurately supported by mechanical help ! You 
know, on the other hand, that wages are much higher than in 
Europe,— a dollar and a half a day, two, two and a half, four. 
Vou know with what prudential societies the activity of these 
people is surrounded. These societies are so numerous, so 
well ordered, so ready to sustain the workman and his family 
in so many circumstances, from loss of work to death ! Thanks 
to one of these societies the man owns his own house. Thanks 
to endowments of all sorts, the education of his children is 
ensured. The tax of blood — that monstrous abuse of our 
civilization — is spared to him and his sons. You return 
again to this thought, which has determined so many emi- 
grants to leave all, that America is the paradise of the common 
people. 

How reconcile two points of view, both of which are based 
upon indisputable though radically contradictory facts? You 
turn the pages of publications issued by working men and 
women. The same contradiction appears still more strikingly. 
In the programme of one of the associations that pass for 
being the most advanced, you read, "Calling upon God to 
witness the rectitude of our intentions." In a sort of hymn 
in honor of the eight-hour day, ending with the line 

"Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will," 

you three times meet the name of God, and three times find 
His and Him printed with a capital letter. You conclude 
therefrom that the natural desire for beneficent reforms is 
associated, in the American workman, with a deep religious 
instinct, and you decide that this characteristic fits in well 



THE LOWER ORDERS 161 

with the logic of the natural character. Wherever the dom- 
inant element of a character is will, the most highly developed 
sentiment is necessarily that of responsibility, and the relig- 
ous life is its perfectly natural condition. 

Take up another paper, also designed for workingmen, and 
brought to your attention as typical, and to your amazement 
you will find declarations in the style of the following: "Par- 
adise is a dream invented by rogues, who wish to conceal their 
crimes from their victims." "When the laborer perceives 
that the other world, which people are forever telling him 
about, is a mirage, he will knock at the doors of the rich 
thieves, gun in hand, demanding his share in the good things 
of life, and this without delay." "Religion, authority, state, 
— all these idols were carved out of the same block of wood. 
We will shatter them all." 

What can we think of a social class of whom such opposite 
accounts are equally true? That is a psychological problem 
far too profound for me to solve. 1 get a glimpse of at least 
a conjecture which may permit one to comprehend the co- 
existence of ideas so antithetical in the laboring classes of 
America. Much has contributed to this hypothesis, — pro- 
longed study of conditions, visits to factories, the reading of 
a quantity of reports, visits to innumerable workingmen' s 
homes, interviews with especially competent persons. I shall 
give from among notes taken in the course of an inquiry still 
too short, only those which chime in with the familiar tone 
of this travelling journal, which does not aspire to be a treatise 
on political economy. 

Conversations with two of the men who have most efficiently 
pondered the problem of the social future of America, His 
Eminence Cardinal Gibbons and Monsignor Ireland, appear 
to me to have summed up with authority and superior clear- 
ness the optimistic view of the future. Though they occurred 

M 



162 OUTRE-MER 

several weeks apart, I will transcribe them in succession, as 
they are complementary to one another. 

All French people know the names of these two apostles, 
thanks to the works of M. de Meaux and M. Max Leclerc, 
thanks also to the Abbe Klein's fine translation of a few 
sermons preached by the archbishop of St. Paul. These two 
prelates have been very active workers in the Catholic propa- 
ganda in the United States, of which I have already spoken. 
A few figures will permit us to measure it more accurately. 

At the beginning of this century American Catholics were 
in number about twenty-five thousand. A bishop and some 
thirty priests sufficed for the service of souls. To-day they 
count more than ten millions of members. Their churches 
and seminaries continually increase. They have founded at 
the gates of Washington a university which assures to their 
teaching all the supremacy of the most modern knowl- 
edge. Monsignor Keane is its rector. One of the grandest 
figures of the dignified clergy of America is this rector, with 
the vigorous countenance of the man of action, with vibrating 
voice, gestures at times almost rigid,, and eyes of flame. 

"All that we have done," he said to me, "we have done 
through liberty. We have no relations with the State, and 
we get along together very well. We are paid by our adher- 
ents, and we like that. If they find us too severe," he added, 
"and undertake to make us feel it, we support it without 
pain ; for we like that, also, to do without superfluities and 
display. When I was bishop of Richmond my diocese was 
very poor. I lived in two little rooms and I was happy. 
What we do not like is for the ministers of the Church to 
maintain the style of a prince, to form a nobility. Such vani- 
ties do not become the disciples of the Divine Master." 

Such sentiments explain better than any commentary why 
the clergy have gained a place against which the efforts of 
intolerant fanatics like the A. P. A. cannot prevail. This is 



THE LOWER ORDERS 163 

the name of an anti-Catholic league recently formed here, 
which calls itself the American Protective Association. Those 
who compose it hate the Church with that strange hatred so 
common among us. They well understand that in the United 
States they must attack it upon the ground of liberty itself. 
^4fl this method they resemble the radicals of our country. 
Their programme consists in representing Catholicism as in- 
compatible with the duties of the American citizen. They 
cite an article in the naturalization laws, which demands 
the full, dispassionate renunciation of all fidelity to any 
foreign sovereign. They add : " Do not Catholics themselves 
proclaim themselves dependants of the Pope, who lives in 
Rome? " 

Neither the dangerous quibble of this reasoning, which 
affects to confound the spiritual and temporal realms, nor the 
diffusion by thousands of false documents, where the vener- 
ated names of the archbishops of Baltimore and St. Paul appear 
at the end of secret instructions drawn up with most adroit 
perfidy, nor the astute appeal to the ancient hostility to popery, 
so lively in the hearts of the descendants of the Puritans, — 
no stratagem, in fact, has been able to prevail against the 
evident warmth of civic energy displayed by this truly living 
episcopate. Neither of these prelates has missed a single 
opportunity to serve the people, to show himself a man of 
his time and of his country. When the association of the 
Knights of Labor was threatened at Rome, Cardinal Gibbons 
and Monsignor Ireland had no hesitation in going thither at 
once to defend it. When the organizers of the Exposition 
had the idea of opening at Chicago that Congress of Religions 
which, in spite of some unfortunate charlatanism in matters 
of detail, will remain one of the noble symbols of our epoch, 
the same Cardinal Gibbons consented to open it with a 
solemn prayer. 

In all circumstances their hearts beat in unison with the 



164 OUTRE-MER 

heart of the nation. There is no merit in this. A constitu- 
tion which permits them to practise their religion untram- 
melled, to form associations and possess property without 
check, to institute good works without opposition, and to 
secure the recruitment of their clergy without sophistry, — 
what more could they ask? With what enthusiasm would the 
Catholics of France accept the suppression of the Concordat 
with the budget of worship, under such guarantees ! And then 
the clergy in the United States are really, closely, American. 
The characteristics which distinguish this robust race, and 
which I noted in connection with society, as well as with 
business, are found with the same intensity in these bishops 
and priests. In the first place, they have realism, the 
keen positive vision of the fact. Read the two volumes in 
which the cardinal has summed up Catholic dogma for his 
fellow-citizens, especially the pages referring to divorce. 
They have the hardy vigor of hope, and an enormous breadth 
of plan. Listen to the archbishop of St. Paul : — 
/ "We have an admirable opportunity. In a hundred years 
America will have four hundred millions of inhabitants. Our 
work is to make this whole country Catholic ! " 

Over and above this they have the great national virtue, 
— determination. 

"Our device," one of them said, "is do and dare!"" 

W^ are pretty far here from the priestly functionary whom 
the State wraps in swaddling-clothes for his protection, far 
from those restrictive laws which forbid the religious orders 
to own property, the vestries to administer themselves, the 
clergy to recruit themselves freely ! Years ago I was dining 
at the same table with Gambetta. It was shortly after the 
war, and the Opportunist chief was speaking of the programme 
which he should apply if ever he arrived at power. 

"And the separation of Church and State?" asked one of 
the guests. 



THE LOWER ORDERS 165 

"We should beware of that," quickly answered he whom 
his friends then called "the tiger." "It would be necessary 
to give too much liberty to the Church, and she would become 
too strong." 

Here in America I have thoroughly understood the signifi- 
cance of this remark, which has remained in my memory from 
early manhood. In uttering it, Gambetta followed the true 
Jacobean and Caesarean tradition. That this powerful states- 
man, the only one which the Revolution of 1870 produced 
among us, should have thought thus in perfectly good faith, 
proves better than many pages how widely different may be 
the translations of the one word, democracy, into facts, laws, 
customs. A constitution is nothing, except through the men 
who obey it. 

Memory has its freaks. Going one winter's day from Wash- 
ington to Baltimore, where I was to see Monsignor Gibbons, I 
was taken possession of by the picture of the former dictator 
of Tours, because of this remark, which had fallen from his 
eloquent lips between two whiffs of a very black cigar, in the 
dining-room of a little basement of the Rue Linnseus. I was 
asking myself what France would have become if that long- 
winded orator, intelligent and capable of adaptation and edu- 
cation as he was, had made this journey to America and seen 
for himself all that the Church may yet to-day represent of 
democratic fecundity and broad popular instruction where it 
is free. 

Then a strangely different picture rose up before my mind, 
that of the brilliant and unfortunate Edgar Poe, who wrote his 
"Raven" half a century ago, in the capital of Maryland, 
which I see yonder. Although this poet's genius is spoiled 
for me now by his terrible abuse of the artificial, by the almost 
mechanical grouping of his thoughts, his sensitive nature 
still touches me, and, above all, his sorrowful fate. I think of 



166 OUTRE-MER 

the ever-new mystery of the constitution of the soul. That of 
the poet found its principle of despair and degradation in the 
society where that of the priest whom I am shortly to meet 
found its ample development. The spirituality of the one 
was its torture, the spirituality of the other made its strength, 
in the same circle of the same civilization. 

Yet at the first white view of Baltimore, as I walk along 
these streets, I feelthat it is indeed, of all American cities that 
I have seen, the one best adapted to the dreams of poesy. St. 
Charles Street, somewhat narrow and close between its rather 
low, white houses, has the charm of intimacy. It is quiet 
enough around the square where Washington's monument 
stands, and I recall the elegant Place Stanislaus of Nancy. I 
have the impression, so rare here, but which they assure me I 
shall have still more strongly in Philadelphia, of a corner in 
some city which has endured, which will endure. I'hese sur- 
roundings, less temporary, less pronounced, and more delicate, 
harmonize with my expectation, with the approach to the 
American primate, as the priests in the University of Wash- 
ington described him to me. A few steps farther along the 
quiet sidewalk of this street, which has no electric tramways 
or cable cars, and I find myself before a palace of the same 
simple style as the neighboring houses. The cupola of a 
church dominates it. It is the cardinal's residence. 

His Eminence received me in a simply furnished drawing- 
room, adorned with the portraits of celebrated priests. Those 
of Leo XIII. and Cardinal Manning are engravings, standing 
on easels. Physically, Monsignor Gibbons is of the race of 
ascetics, of whom it seems as if mortifications had left just 
enough flesh to support the travail of the soul. 

Though he is past sixty, he appears to be hardly fifty, so 
erect is his slight and supple figure. I had caught a glimpse 
of him the other day in Washington, in one of the galleries 
of the House, wearing no token of his dignity except a purple 



THE LOWER ORDERS 167 

skull-cap on the back of his head. To-day, in his own house, 
he wore a black cassock bordered with red, a cassock irre- 
proachable in appearance, though not entirely new. Beneath 
it his feet could be seen, covered with thick-soled, elastic 
boots. Simplicity is everywhere stamped upon the surround- 
ings of this man of prayer and action, — upon him and around 
him. 

The hands which project from the sleeves, with no show of 
linen, are thin and delicate. The face, at once very thought- 
ful and very calm, is long and deeply lined, with a somewhat 
large nose, and a projecting upper lip, rigid, like that of the 
portrait of Erasmus in the Louvre. It is the mouth of the 
writer and the diplomatist rather than of the orator. Expres- 
sion is to be looked for elsewhere, in the deep lines of the 
cheek and in the eyes, of so clear a blue in an almost ashen 
face. The eyes look out with an admirable expression, very 
gentle and very firm, very clear and very straightforward, a 
look of certitude. Modern psychologists have a somewhat 
peculiar, but very accurate word, to designate those characters 
in whom all powers seem to be subordinated to a central 
energy, a scientific or artistic, political or religious faith, ac- 
cepted unhesitatingly and without revision. They call them 
the Unified. Seneca has already said, anticipating by his 
discoveries as moralist our modern theories of mind : — 

"If you have met a man who is one, you have seen a great 
thing." 

An inward disposition is not enough to secure so even a 
balance. For that is required a very rare harmony between 
circumstances and instinct, between surroundings and inward 
impulse. This juxtaposition occurs in the cardinal to a 
singularly exceptional degree. Speaking to me of his life, he 
told me with the affecting gratitude of a believer who recog- 
nizes the acts of Providence behind the fashion of the passing 
world : — 



168 OUTRE-MER 

" I have had a happiness very seldom known. I was born 
here, baptized here. I made my first communion here, and I 
was ordained priest in the same cathedral of which I am now 
the archbishop." 

And he went on to relate his first visit to Rome, where he 
had a seat in the Council of the Vatican, the youngest of the 
thousand prelates gathered in that assembly. He was bishop 
of South Carolina, and had been barely five years a priest. 
At that time there were only forty-five bishops in the United 
States. 

"I remember," he went on, "coming here to the first Bal- 
timore assembly, when I was chancellor to the archbishop. 
There are more than twice that number now. It is with this 
as with conversions. They counted then. This year I have 
had seven hundred in this diocese alone, which is very small. 
The human soul needs food," he added in English, "and it 
finds a perfect nourishment only in Catholicism." 

He speaks very pure French, hesitating a little for words. 
Listening to him you feel that his utterance would never be 
brilliant, but his speech is so free from declamation, his mind 
is so evidently at the service of a conscience in love with 
truth, each phrase reveals so steady an effort to make the 
expression tally with the thought, without extravagance or 
feebleness, that an irresistible authority emanates from his 
words, the same that was presaged by his countenance, gentle, 
firm, and true. Quite naturally when he entered upon the 
field of social problems, Monsignor Gibbons again changed 
from French to English. It would seem as if we ought to be 
able to use a foreign language with the greater facility the 
more familiar are the ideas which we wish to express. Noth- 
ing of the kind. The more we have thought of a subject, the 
more precise our ideas, the more we require for their expres- 
sion the language in which we formulated them. Perhaps we 
must seek here for one of the reasons why so many superior 



THE LOWER ORDERS 169 

men experience singular difficulty in using for their own 
thoughts languages which they understand and read perfectly. 

" I never had any influence over the creation or the organi- 
zation of the Knights of Labor," the cardinal replied to one 
of my questions. "What I said on the subject at the time of 
my visit to Rome was that the Church has no motive for con- 
demning on the spot and on principle all associations of 
laboring men. I have always thought, and I still think, that 
workingmen have the right to combine to protect themselves 
against the tyranny of their employers. I know the dangers 
of these associations; to begin with, strikes; once united 
they are so soon tempted to enter upon this way, which is not 
good, and in which they have always been crushed; and then 
intolerance and the persecution of their comrades who refuse 
to join them. Notwithstanding these dangers, I believe that 
the Church would risk the loss of too many souls by forcing 
millions of these men to choose between their faith and a 
society of which the principles are not in themselves to be 
condemned." 

"A revolution in the United States? " he said, in answer to 
another question. " No, I do not think it possible. The 
Americans have been often reproached for being first and 
above all things practical. Before they dispossess a mil- 
lionaire — a billionaire, if you will — of a single dollar, they 
will realize that they are overturning the cornerstone of the 
whole edifice, and they will pause. Our workingmen are 
very intelligent, their ideas are daring but very just, and they 
are quick to see the logic of things. They already under- 
stand, in spite of the sophisms of agitators, that to attack 
property in one form is to attack it in all forms. When the 
Chicago anarchists were condemned, public sentiment, as 
manifested almost immediately after by a vote, was in favor 
of the judge who pronounced the sentence, and against the 
governor of Illinois, who had manifested sympathy with the 



170 OUTRE-MER 

anarchists. We have no such revolutionary ferments among 
us as are upheaving Europe. Our workingman, when he will 
work, gains amply the means of livelihood, — two, three 
dollars a day. They will come in time everywhere to the 
eight-hour day. More than this, they are not irreligious. 
There is not an instance of a public man who is an avowed 
atheist." 

Upon my observing that I had, however, met at Harvard 
University a large number of minds imbued with agnosticism, — 

"It is true," replied' the cardinal, "that a movement of 
this kind maybe recognized in certain very cultivated circles. 
But it is confined to those circles, and Christianity is still 
very vital, both in private and public life. Congress is opened 
with prayer. The President never addresses the people with- 
out pronouncing the name of God. The Sabbath rest is faith- 
fully observed." 

There was a passionate firmness in the archbishop's voice, 
and a warmer light in his eyes when he spoke of religious 
things; and he also, like Monsignor Keane, extolled the bless- 
ings of liberty. 

"Our great strength," he resumed, " is in having no alliance 
with the State, and in the respect of the State for our indepen- 
dence. We can the more efficaciously take part in public 
affairs. under these conditions, and work for the good of all. 
The State willingly aids us in matters of public order. For 
example, in Baltimore, on the occasion of the last council, 
the postoffice department opened a special office for the use 
of the bishops. But, beyond minor details of this kind, the 
State is not concerned with us. It is the public which takes 
us into consideration. They are continually coming to con- 
sult us. Thus, not long ago, in the matter of the Louisiana 
lottery, I was requested to write a letter for the public press. 
I wrote it, and I think it helped toward the suppression of 
that scandal. The people love us, because we are their friends." 



THE LOWER ORDERS 171 

I interposed with tlie question if this was also the case with 
the rich, and if, on the other hand, he did not foresee great 
difficulties arising from the accumulation of such immense 
fortunes in so small a number of hands. 

" Yes, " he went on, " that is a grave problem. We must hope 
that in time a better way of dividing the common wealth 
will be found. This is why I said just now that my sympa- 
thies are with the associations by which the workingmen 
protect themselves. And I am not afraid of them, notwith- 
standing formidable excesses, because our workingman — I 
cannot say it too emphatically — is profoundly, fundamentally 
sensible. In the first place, he has himself the chance of be- 
coming the millionaire he so much envies. That often occurs. 
Besides, even apart from this hope, he is instinctively liberal 
and just. When the income tax was proposed, I had occasion 
to talk it over with many of the laboring class. I found them 
all opposed to the measure, and all for the same reason. They 
did not approve of a measure which tended to espionage and 
falsehood. They deemed it inquisitorial and immoral. Yes, 
I have confidence in the people. I have confidence in their 
love of truth. I had a very evident proof of it a few years 
ago, when I published a little book showing Catholicism as 
it is, entitled Tlie Faith of Our Fatheis. Two hundred 
and fifty thousand copies were sold, and Catholics were not 
tj>e larger number of the purchasers." 

The prelate's serious countenance lighted up at the mem- 
ory. I never felt more acutely than when I saw that proud 
smile the broad separation between the petty self-gratulation 
of the professional author, counting his thousands for vanity 
or for lucre, and the manly joy of the champion of the faith, 
who measures by the success of a book the service he has ren- 
dered to the truth. Men of (iod give such teachings without 
even knov^ing it. 

With this beneficent impression closed an interview of which 



172 OUTRE-MER 

I think I have usefully preserved the most important features. 
As I crossed the threshold of the See House, I bore with me 
the feeling that I had been talking with an excellent priest. 
"That is really something," as an old priest said to me in the 
Holy Land, showing me the view of Nazareth. After saying 
to me, " I look every day upon this scene and I say to myself, 
This is where Our Lord went about when he was a little child; 
yes," he added, with emphasis, "that is really something." 

Who was it wrote this profound sentence, in which all the 
sublimity of the Christian priesthood is summed up: "God 
gave the priest to the world. The priest's charge is to give 
the world to God." 

A few weeks later I was in the " hall " of one of the great 
hotels in Fifth Avenue, New York. In the office clerks were 
sorting mails, talking into telephones, stamping bills. Busi- 
ness men were reading their letters, cigar in mouth. Others 
were crowded around a little table, where a keen-eyed young 
woman, pale from sedentary work, was playing with nimble 
fingers upon the keys of a type-writing machine. They were 
waiting their turns to dictate a letter. Others were awaiting 
the descent of one of the three elevators that ply shuttle-wise 
along the fourteen stories of the hotel. Others were passing 
through a door beyond which could be seen reflected in a mir- 
ror the bar counter, surrounded by persons seeking refreshment. 

In the midst of the "hall" a man was conversing — a sort 
of giant with powerful frame, one of those men of broad 
shoulders, thick waists, large hands and feet, in whom nature 
appears to have put the most vitality, and used, so to speak, 
the most material. But the straight lapels of his frock-coat 
showed that he belonged to the Church, and his violet collar 
that he occupied a high place there. It was Monsignor 
Ireland, Archbishop of St. Paul, whom I had vainly sought 
the previous autumn in his diocese of Minnesota. 



THE LOWER ORDERS 173 

I should have recognized him if his name had not been 
spoken, so much is he the visible embodiment of his elo- 
quence. His large, long face, with its deeply marked feat- 
ures, is lighted up with bluish eyes, almost too small for these 
strong brown features. The grizzling of his hair and eyebrows, 
naturally very black, betray the prelate's fifty-seven years 
passed. The square chin gives evidence of a strong will, the 
high nose of sagacity, the forehead has that slightly retreating 
line which marked Mirabeau and Gambetta, two other great 
orators. The mouth is admirably flexible and expressive. It 
is an eloquent and persuasive mouth, with large lips that speak 
of kindliness, though when at rest they are somewhat stern. 
Notwithstanding his valor, the archbishop has passed through 
too many struggles not to have sometimes longed to utter the 
Nunc dimiitis of the wearied crusader. At that moment he 
was all attention and good nature. I was to learn from him a 
few minutes later that the personage with whom he was thus 
publicly conversing was a reporter. 

"I never refuse to see a journalist," he said, after explain- 
ing this little American custom. "Only I warn them that if 
they report me incorrectly, I will never see them again." 

The archbishop's voice is guttural, almost harsh, a charac- 
teristic common to many celebrated orators. One of his 
admirers had told me that the opening words of his speeches 
are sometimes painful to the ear, but soon it becomes accus- 
tomed to his tones. Then he himself warms up, and the gift 
of expressioli is so mighty in this man who was born to be a 
public leader, if not an apostle, that you end by losing even 
the harshness of his voice. What never-to-be-forgotten hours 
I spent that morning, and that afternoon, and still another 
day hearing him talk of America with profound patriotism, 
of France with touching sympathy, of Europe with lucid and 
high impartiality! Listening, I wondered at the flexibility 
of his mind, in which there is all the excitability of the Celt, 



174 OUTRE-MER 

— Monsignor Ireland, as his name indicates, is of an Irish 
family, — all the logic of the Latin, — he was educated in the 
little seminary of Maximieux in the diocese of Belley, France, 

— and all the realism of the American laboring people. His 
father was a carpenter, who came from Ireland to Minnesota 
long before the city of which his son is archbishop had come 
into existence. 

I listened while this versatile and vivacious discourse passed 
from the highest theological subjects to the humblest details of 
practical activity. The archbishop told me how, at one time, 
he had been obliged to oversee the seed-sowing of the immi- 
grants of his diocese, who were too many and too ignorant 
to make the best use of the homesteads they had taken 
up. Then he replied to my intricate psychological questions 
as to the nature of American piety, in which mysticism is so 
promptly translated in terms of activity. He described his 
first visit to Rome, and the sort of terrified surprise with 
which the old cardinals looked upon him. Then returning to 
the social problem upon which I had been questioning him, 
as I had questioned the cardinal, he went on: — 

"Our workingmen? No, I dread nothing from them. In 
the first place, they are well disposed, and those of them who 
are not well disposed have good sense. There is in America, 
from top to bottom of the ladder, a much more conservative 
spirit than Europe imagines. The dominating sentiment 
everywhere, in the poor day-laborer as well as in the million- 
aire, is respect for law. The laborer is not revolutionary. 
He knows too well the value of what he has, to dream of a 
social order which shall be absolutely different. But while he 
accepts the existing order, he desires to protect himself from 
it, — is he so wrong? And he proceeds by means of associa- 
tions, — is he so wrong in that? That is in the race. Rich 
men amuse themselves in clubs. Why should not working- 
men organize in clubs too, and especially in societies for 



THE LOWER ORDERS 175 

their own protection? A great step was taken when the 
several trade associations formed themselves into a larger 
association. And again, why should they not? In this way 
was formed the Knights of Labor. In my opinion, this is 
well. Capitalists are beginning to understand that they have 
to reckon with these great collective forces. What is the 
result? They confer, and conference is the surest means of 
coming to an understanding. For instance, this year the 
directors of a Western railway, the president of which I know, 
felt obliged to lower wages ; the profits of the company had 
fallen too low. This is what took place. First of all the 
president entered into conference with the representatives of 
the engineers. These conferences lasted four days. The 
men asked the reason of the reduction. They examined the 
balance-sheet of the company. They learned what were the 
figures necessary to the maintenance of their present wages. 
These conferences with the president ended, they conferred 
with their comrades. Finally, this body of workmen having 
accepted the reduction, it was the brakemen's turn. You 
would need to have been present at one of these interviews 
to be able to appreciate the deep sense of equality that per- 
vades this country. But, you see, the American business man 
is too little removed from the time when he was himself a 
workingman not to know, when he talks with his workmen, 
with whom he is talking and what he ought to say to them. 
These people do not deem themselves of two different races, 
and that is much." 

The archbishop was silent. He was about to touch frankly 
upon a painful subject. In every word I had felt the thrill 
of the plebeian apostle. By his origin the neighbor of the 
humble, like the business men of whom he had been speak- 
ing, he rejoices in the progress of the laboring people, and 
suffers in their mistakes. He went on: — 

"Nevertheless, our workingmen are touched by two grave 



176 OUTRE-MER 

faults. The first and greatest is intemperance — unhappily 
that of alcoholic liquors. For they drink practically no 
wine. We have carried on and we are carrying on an un- 
wearied campaign against this vice. We have not yet con- 
quered. The second fault is extravagance. Our working- 
men go too fast. They spend their money as fast as they 
earn it. They want their daughters to be ladies. Go into 
their houses: you will find carpets, pianos. It is not that 
they care for luxuries; it is the profound feeling of equality 
that urges them to make a show. It seems to them natural, 
almost necessary, that luxuries should be within the reach of 
everybody. Then when hard times come they are poor and 
they suffer. Insurance is correcting this a little. Side by 
side with the extravagant are the prudent. Many come at 
last to buy a bit of ground on which to build a house, and 
then they immediately buy the next lot for speculation. This 
is why envy of capital does not exist among us. More than 
this, our working people are chaste and they are religious. I 
am told that in Europe concubinage is the scourge of the 
poorer classes. There is nothing of the sort among our 
people. I can sum up their virtues in one word : the hope of 
the Church is in the working people. All who are Catholics 
practise their religion. You will see them all communicate 
at Easter almost without exception. This fervor of the 
people is what gives us the magnificent opportunity of which 
I am always speaking. 

"Yes," he went on, "this immense country is new, free 
from prejudices, and it increasingly feels the need of that 
order in unity which is the distinctive mark of the Catholic 
Church. The great problem in order that this unity shall be 
manifested, that there shall truly be an American Catholic 
Church, is that of language; there must first be one speech. 
But many of our members are immigrants, Germans, Poles, 
French Canadians. They come here speaking their own Ian- 



THE LOWER ORDERS 177 

guage, led by priests who speak no other hinguage. Here is 
a real peril. If we insist upon the English language in our 
dioceses, these priests will be left without a flock and these 
people without priests. And yet it is necessary to compel 
both people and priest to learn English, in order that our 
Church be not dissipated in a series of local bodies and also 
that we leave no ground for the accusation that we remain as 
foreigners in the country. But what then ! it is an effort to 
require it of the first generation, but the second will be com- 
posed of true American Catholics. Here again we have had a 
struggle. The Germans have petitioned Rome that the bishops 
here should be of different nationalities in proportion to the 
nationality of the immigrants. Now of ten million Catholics, 
more than three millions are Germans. A third of the bishops 
would then be Germans. That would be the end of the unity 
of our Church. Happily, the petitioners mingled politics 
with their request. That touched the patriotism of American 
citizens. They bestirred themselves and we won. Ah, our 
future is vast, very vast, if only we will be profoundly, reso- 
lutely American and democratic. We have need of three 
things: morality, and we have it; adherents, and immigration 
is unceasingly bringing them; knowledge, and our universities 
and seminaries are going to give it to us more and more. But 
mark well, it is not the culture of yesterday that we need, but 
that of to-day, of to-morrow, of the twentieth century." 

And while the archbishop appeared already to see with his 
clear eyes the triumphant morrow for which he has given his 
life hour by hour, I called to mind his utterance in the cathe- 
dral of Baltimore, of which all our conversation had been only 
a commentary : — 

"Christ made the social question the very basis of his teach- 
ing. For this is the proof he gave of his divinity: The blind 
see, the lame walk, the lepers are healed, to the poor the gospel 
is preached f " 

N 



178 OUTRE-MER 

One of my French friends, to whom I read the report of 
these two conversations, shook his head. For ten years his 
duties have kept him in New York. He knows the United 
States well, and he believes the country to be threatened, if 
not with a catastrophe, at least with tremendous disturbances. 
I should add that he is naturally a pessimist, very hostile to 
democracy, and that he lives in a state of permanent rage 
against the positivism and the impenetrability of American 
society. 

"I should like to have them here, your two archbishops," he 
said, after a few petulant and mocking exclamations; " I should 
just like to lay a few of these documents before their eyes." 
And running through one of the cases on his desk he brought 
out several files of papers. 

"These are not ideas and phrases, here; these are facts and 
figures which I have collected for a great work, which I shall 
perhaps never write, and as they are all taken from reports 
published by the Labor Bureau in the last ten years they are 
incontestable. It is now January, 1894. Well, at the end of 
last December, not twenty days ago, the official investigation 
stated that, in the States of New York and New Jersey, the 
number of men out of work amounted to two hundred and 
twenty-three thousand two hundred and fifty. In Pennsylvania, 
the number reached a hundred and fifty-one thousand five hun- 
dred. Calculate, and you will not be beyond the truth, that 
there are thus in this country more than eight hundred thousand 
unemployed, as they call them. Add the two million women 
and children who compose their families, and you will reach 
the conclusion that at the present moment, in this terrible 
winter, the Great Republic has upon its soil three millions of 
human beings who are literally dying of hunger ! And they 
would have me not believe in an approaching revolution, when 
such armies of desperate folk are here ready to follow the first 
agitator who knows enough to arouse them ! 



THE LOWER ORDERS 179 

"Add to this that all these starving people are enrolled in 
some association, and that beside them swarms another army, 
almost as wretched, — the workmen whose pay is little by little 
reduced, and whose work is made almost intolerable by the 
universal business depression. Here are more figures from the 
same official list. Vou will find them, and others as con- 
clusive, in the book which Madame Aveling — Karl Marx's 
daughter, I think — and her husband have published, under 
the title The Working- Class Movement in America. In Fall 
River, for example, in the large cotton manufactories, the 
average wage of the workingman is nine dollars a week; that 
gives him a dollar and a half a day, while in New Jersey the 
average comes down to a dollar and a quarter, and in the rest 
of the United States to a dollar. At a first glance, these figures 
seem rather high, and it is by bringing them forward that cer- 
tain economists boast of the superior condition of the laboring 
classes in America. But to appreciate what these six or seven 
francs a day are really worth, you must make a comparative 
table of the cost of living in different countries. 

" The average rent of the American laborer is sixty-six dol- 
lars a year, while the average rent of the Swiss laborer is twenty- 
five dollars, and that of the German laborer twenty-two dollars. 
The American laborer spends for fuel nearly thirty dollars, 
while the Swiss laborer spends twenty, and the German ten. 
Everything is in proportion. The wages which appear suffi- 
cient from a European point of view do not represent the 
support of a family. The labor of women and children results 
from this state of things, and here the conditions are still more 
severe. See, here are other figures. In Philadelphia, the 
making of women's chemises brings sixty cents a dozen, nurse's 
aprons thirty-five cents. A woman can make nearly a dozen 
chemises or two dozen aprons in a day, working from half-past 
five in the morning till seven in the evening. Better educated 
women, employed in what they call "clerical work," in stores 



U80 OUTRE-MER 

and offices, earn from five to six dollars a week. Out of this 
they must pay their board and washing, and dress well in order 
not to lose their positions. 

"As to the children, these are the heart-rending statistics. 
In Connecticut, of seventy thousand laborers, five thousand are 
under fifteen. Of every hundred employed in cigar-making 
in New York City, twenty-five are children. Now the work 
in cigar factories is ten hours a day. In the cotton-mills it is 
eleven. In Detroit, the small boys in the factories work nine 
hours sixteen minutes, the little girls nine hours and ten min- 
utes. Observe that these figures are taken in the States where 
labor legislation is a prominent feature. And now," he added, 
folding up his papers, " if you want these statistics to become 
alive for you, you have only three very simple experiments to 
make, none of which will keep you from your hotel more than 
a few hours. Ask a newspaper editor to detail one of his 
reporters to accompany you into the lower quarters of the 
city: the first visit during the day, the second at night, the 
third to the penitentiaries on the Islands. You will see 
the refuse of this civilization, the pomps of which have so 
dazzled you, and perhaps you will conclude that I am not 
wrong in protesting against the optimism of two great bishops, 
whose ideas about the working classes in the United States you 
have sought. Like many good men, the dreams evoked by 
their good wishes hide from them the hideousness of the 
real." 

I have followed my compatriot's counsels, although the 
documents which he cited made no very profound impression 
upon me. I have studied social problems too much to attach 
great importance to official investigations. They are the same 
as revolutionary inquisitions, and that is saying all. Both 
proceed by extreme figures and, when all is said, the proof that 
existing social conditions are endurable is that men continue 



THE LOWER ORDERS 181 , 

to endure. They permit frightful wretchedness, which springs 
from causes too complex for the remedy for this refuse of 
civilization, as my friend expresses it, ever to be formulated 
with exactness. Whenever men have tried to apply radical 
measures of reform to this infinitely complex organism, they 
have added the injustice of disorder and its misfortunes to the 
injustice of destiny. None the less, the revolutionaries are 
right in dwelling with emphasis upon the too odious facts and 
the brutal oppressions which constitute the social sin, the sin 
of all of us. They prevent wretched egotism from sleeping, 
either by terrifying us in the midst of our security, or by 
awakening our humanity, and they urge us to remedies of 
detail, the only ones which have even a little mended the lot 
of the victims of a too severe competition. 

I do not therefore regret the three excursions into the lower 
strata of New York, undertaken in consequence of this conver- 
sation. Although such experiences are very superficial, I think I 
have gained from them a more accurate view of the conditions 
among which the future of this unparalleled country is being 
worked out. The hours spent in these three visits were short, 
and the details which I was able to grasp were limited. l"he 
reader will judge by the pages in my journal, to which I con- 
signed each of these "experiences " on the spot, whether I am 
mistaken in attaching some importance to their significance. 

January ij. — Toward noon on a cruelly cold winter's day, 

Mr. K and I boarded one of the green cars on Broadway, 

which are still drawn by horses. In twenty minutes we had 
quitted the New York which J know for a New York which I 
do not know. Blocks succeed blocks, built after a still more 
incoherent manner in this part of the town than in that in 
which I disembarked five months ago. We changed cars at 
the corner of First Avenue, and after twenty minutes got out 
again^ and went on foot down a long street of dilapidated 



182 OUTRE-MER 

houses. The cellar of one of them has a steep stairway, which 
leads us to a sort of little "office," divided into two rooms 
by an unpainted, unpapered board partition. One serves as 
waiting-room, the other as office. 

This is the central office of one of the workingmen's asso- 
ciations, which abound in the United States. 'I'his one has 
recently been founded by a young man, who happens at the 
moment to be within. I shall call him Bazarow, after 
the nihilist student in Turgenieff' s novel. Fathers and Sons ; 
it will not be in contradiction with the remarks which we ex- 
changed during this strange afternoon. He is a Russian Jew, 
from the part that borders on Poland, who came to New York 
six years ago, — an agitator by profession. He is rather good- 
looking, with long, very light hair, v,'hich curls around a very 
pale face. His prominent eyes are sea-green, the whites 
dashed with minute threads of blood. His thick enunciation 
has less of a foreign accent in French than in English. He 
has but recently acquired the latter language, but he speaks it 
with the extreme facility which belongs to his double origin, 
— Slav and Semite. 

This disturbing personage asked us to be seated, after hav- 
ing looked at us with that searching glance which takes for 
granted a possible spy, — the glance of all militant socialists. 
However, he is all right with the law, and the certificate which 
authorized him to found his association is displayed upon the 
wall above the table, beside a small notice printed in Hebrew, 
and marked with a death's head and crossbones. Apparently 
he saw nothing in us to justify suspicion, for he continued to 
sort the voluminous morning mail; but this time with the 
ostentatious air of the over-busy official. He would read 
names, dictate appointments, express surprise at not recogniz- 
ing this or that one, consult his secretary. 

The latter, a man of forty, sordid of dress and sorry of mien, 
was occupied with counting out fifty cents to a workingman, 



. THE LOWER ORDERS 183 

who meekly, with a sort of dogged passivity, held out a red 
pass-book. The secretary exchanged a few words in German 
with his gloomy client, then spoke in Russian to his chief. 
I became aware of a pile of pamphlets on the table, destined 
for the propaganda. They were the English translation of 
a work by the Italian Mazzini, — The Duties of Man. I 
opened it haphazard, and found a chapter upon God. This is 
the point from which the revolutionary party sets out ! To 
arrive where, their newspapers tell too clearly ! What they do 
not tell clearly enough, that which such a place as this makes 
perceptible and, as it were, concrete, is the international mix- 
ture, the astounding fusion of races, which this company repre- 
sented. 1 found here a corner of Cosmopolis, one of the 
quarters, a suburb, rather, of this city of cities, whose founders 
were exquisites like the Prince de Ligne, Lord Byron, Madame 
de Stael, Beyle, and Heinrich Heine. These great artists and 
noblemen sought in expatriation and travel that which would 
make them the better enjoy the composite charm of the vast 
modern civilization. It is one more proof that our habits and 
our surroundings have precisely the meaning and value of our 
souls. 

Bazarow finished with his mail, and set out with us for the 
police station. We were there to take a detective to accom- 
pany us on our visit to the lower districts of the city. The 
agitator himself expressed the desire that we should be thus 
protected, and himself with us, against dangers which proved 
to be entirely imaginary. But the slight detail showed better 
than all the discourses how essentially this party of social 
destruction, which to us conservatives appears to be so united 
in its hatred of the established order, is at bottom divided 
against itself. Our guide was afraid of being maltreated by 
workingmen of another school of opinion. 

His gait alone was enough, in this city of haste, to betray 



184 OUTRE-MER 

the foreigner. It was the gait of the lounger, who walks with- 
out aim, without haste, without directness. He wore a sack 
overcoat, longer in front than behind, because of the books 
with which his pockets were crammed. With his soft, shape- 
less hat, his flannel shirt, his shiny trousers, he reminded 
me of the Bohemians of literature who haunt the caf^s of 
the Latin Quarter and Montmartre, with their indifference to 
the external world, their aggressive thoughtlessness, and their 
infatuation for ideas, and especially for words. 

During the half hour which we spent going first to the police 
station and then, the chief of the said station being absent, to 
a bar for luncheon, Bazarow talked, talked, talked. His gar- 
rulity was not without eloquence. Like all revolutionaries 
whom I have known, he kept to generalities. He was lavish 
of unverifiable, and therefore indisputable, theories of a vast 
regeneration, continually interrupting himself with a "that is 
my belief," enough to arouse an assembly of idiots to 
frenzy. He announced certain precise opinions upon the 
French peasant, whom he compared with the Russian peasant. 
That he understood them both shows the extent and the 
penetration of this revolutionary work, in its prepara- 
tions for attacking the farm laborer, after corrupting the 
factory hand. The name of Jerusalem having come up in 
the conversation relative to the farm colonies which some 
benevolent Israelites are undertaking in Palestine, Bazarow 
exclaimed : — 

" Jerusalem ! My father wanted to send me there ! But my 
Jerusalem is here. My father," he continued with a sneer, 
"would have made me a saint. I have become an infidel." 
His large green eyes shot forth the strange glance peculiar to 
soiTxe of his race, in which there is an infinitude of mystification 
and of lost illusions. When you have seen the Jews weeping 
at the foot of the Temple wall in Jerusalem, on Fridays, you 
can understand what must be the scepticism of those who have 



THE LOWER ORDERS 185 

hoped for ages, whenever they cease to believe in the promised 
Messiah, who, for them, has never come. 

And, as if this man had heard my thought, he went 
on: — 

"There is a deep gulf between us and the men who believe 
in the Bible, I know. There are those who pretend to be 
socialists, especially Catholics, Archbishop Ireland, for ex- 
ample. But Catholics, Jews, or Protestants, priests, rabbis, or 
pastors, they all tell the people that they must accept the will 
of God, that they must be resigned, satisfied. Well ! socialism 
consists in teaching precisely the opposite, in demonstrating 
that he ought to be in revolt, dissatisfied.'" 

He uttered the profound remark at the very moment when 
we were crossing the threshold of the restaurant, into which 

Mr. K invited him, saying, with the incisive irony of a 

true American,— 

"We democrats like aristocratic public houses, don't we?" 

We entered a dining-room, pretty sumptuously decorated, 
indeed, with mirrors and colored glass. Business men, almost 
all Jews, were taking a hasty lunch. One of them recognized 
Bazarow and shook hands with him. It was one of the manu- 
facturers for whom he had worked on his first arrival in New 
York, and whom he had well-nigh ruined by a strike. 

"He fought me quite openly," said the agitator, "and I 
fought him openly. That is not a reason for not recognizing 
one another." 

He smiled, remembering the strike, episodes of which he 
related to us while eating some fried oysters. He saw in it a 
glorious campaign in favor of ideas which I hope he at least 
believed to be true. He forgot the men it made more hungry. 
For that matter, those are things that revolutionaries never 
think of. When you investigate their mental make-up, you 
always find that these are minds given to the abstract, for 
whom human woe is simply the starting-point for a course of 



186 outri:-mi:r 

reasoning. The theorists who talk of it the most are those 
who have felt it the least ! 

We returned to the police station. Our companion remained 
at the door, and wisely, for the celebrated Mr. Byrnes, whom 
we found at length, spoke of him in terms which would have 
made the visit very painful if he had been present. This 
superintendent of public safety, the best that New York has 
ever had, is a sort of stern-faced giant, with firmly closed 
mouth, and penetrating, almost compelling, eye. It is a 
strange impression thus to exchange in a few seconds the 
company of a declared revolutionary for that of a professional 
officer of justice. You feel the necessity that every civilized 
person shall take part in the implacable and incessant duel 
of order against disorder, and, at the same time, the legiti- 
macy, in a certain sense, of both sorts of people. I was 
destined to feel this impression still more strongly. To escort 
us in our tour through the land of poverty, Mr. Byrnes detailed 
one of his best officers, whose real name I have promised to 
conceal. I shall call him Clark, as I have called the Slavonian 
nihilist Bazarow. 

A man entered, short and thick-set, with the face of a mus- 
tachioed Molossian, and a tenacious jaw beneath a square-cut 
nose. His little black eyes seemed to be burning away back 
near his brain, like those of beasts of prey. He was an 
animal all muscle and all pursuit, his slightest movements 
betraying the agility of a savage. Merely in looking at his walk 
I understood why American romance-writers have a fancy for 
taking detectives as the heroes of their sensational novels. In 
a creature of this race, physical and moral energy are in a state 
of perpetual ebullition, as among soldiers on a campaign. 
Audacity, presence of mind, capacity that would suffice to 
itself in all dangers, address, and art, showed themselves pres- 
ent in this athletic policeman, and, with it all, the joviality of 
a soldier. 



THE LOWER ORDERS 187 

We took leave of Mr. Byrnes, whose sharp eye softened as he 

looked on "his man," and were soon downstairs. Mr. K 

and I introduced Messrs. Clark and Bazarow to one another. 
All the antagonism of two social species was suddenly revealed, 
in the accidental meeting of these two men. The prominent 
eyes of the revolutionist became insolent, with a sort of ironical 
and terrified insolence, while the policeman's little short nose 
wrinkled and shrivelled, like the muzzle of a bulldog about to 
spring. The "Very glad to see you, sir," with which he 
greeted the other, sounded like a growl. Then walking side 
by side, their backs alone continued to call up the thought 
of two worlds in conflict, the one with his trooper's figure, his 
military overcoat, brushed and buttoned, his hat shining like 
metal, his feet encased in strong boots, walking with a singular 
firmness, while the other, by instinct and bravado, emphasized 
his carelessness of attire, with his uncertain steps, his irresolute 
hands stuck in the pockets of his torn and soiled trousers, his 
indifferent, mocking, and indomitable air under his ragged 
headkerchief. And yet they began to converse, with the good- 
natured familiarity which seems to float in the air of this vast 
democracy, and to be breathed in at every pore. 

" It is astonishing that we should not have met before, Mr. 
Clark," said Bazarow. 

"And that I have not arrested you, my boy," replied the 
other. 

" Oh ! " said the Pole, " we know that Mr. Byrnes and his 
men are not fond of men who are engaged in organizing labor, 
and those men are not fond of Mr. Byrnes and his men, either." 

There was pride and defiance in the foreigner's thick utter- 
ance. We foreboded a dispute, and I asked Mr. Clark about 
his life and profession. 

"Well," he said, after a few words about his age and his 
family, " my profession has the merit of always holding out 
the hope of some little excitement. Last week, for example, I 



188 OUTRE-MER 

had the muzzle of a desperate burglar's revolver in my mouth. 
If he had fired, I should not have had the pleasure of making 
your acquaintance and that of this gentleman." 

He looked again toward Bazarow. I felt his muscles swell 
under his overcoat. They tingled at feeling their prey so 
near and not being able to fall upon it. His little eyes shot 
forth a wicked gleam. For the moment the excitement of his 
profession consisted in protecting the enemy upon whom he 
could have pounced with such good will. Mastering himself, 
he laughed and offered him a cigar. 

While conversing thus, we had reached the heart of the dis- 
trict the New Yorkers call the Bowery, from an old Dutch word 
meaning farm. The street which we had entered might, with 
all its sordid houses, have been a suburb of Rome or Naples; 
for it was inhabited only by Italians. After having walked 
for a few moments between these buildings, all whose signs 
and notices were in Italian, we entered the first abode. It 
consisted of two rooms on the level of the street, as small as 
a boat's cabins. 

Men and women, to the number of eight, were working 
there crouched over their work, in a fetid air, which an iron 
stove made still more stifling, and in what dirt! Not one of 
them spoke English. I put a question to them in their own 
language, and learned that they were from Catanzaro, in Cala- 
bria. Four years ago, at this precise date, I was visiting that 
lovely city, perched aloft where one can see the sea, and which 
one reaches by climbing a hillside planted with cactus. Why 
did not they stay there, pasturing their flocks and eating the 
wild fruits that grow along the edge of the thorny green leaves 
of the prickly pear? 

Invincible hope brought them here, to this hole, for which 
they pay eight dollars a month, the price of a year's rent in 
their own country ! Instead of their window opening on the 
wild, purple mountain, the deep green ravines, and the free 



THE LOWER ORDERS 189 

blue sea, they open their window, when they want to renew 
the air, upon a court, cold and noisome as a sewer, into which 
rain down the pestilent microbes from the linen of all the 
neighbors, hanging overhead from ropes. 

It is like this, indefinitely, all along this street, and how 
many others? We visited a second house, where lived a second 
family, composed of nine persons. 'I'his one came from 
Caserta. The women and children are shivering in their 
rags, in spite of the stove, always at white heat. With their 
Southern faces, yellow — almost greenish — from the heat of 
their natal sun, with their brilliant black eyes, these exiles 
move you to pity. Two steps away, in the open air, — if this 
harsh, pestilential cellar-fog can be called air, — girls from 
Abruzzo, wrapped in thick shawls, are tacking coverlids. 
Thin, and already worn out, in spite of their twenty years, 
they look at you with a smile that is hungry and cold, — above 
all cold, cold to the marrow of their bones, cold to their 
blood, — and curse qiiesta bnitissima ierra, this hideous land. 

We recognize the emigration enterprise, the exodus of 
entire villages, the voyage from Naples to Gibraltar, then from 
Gibraltar here, at cheap rates, in the hold or on the deck, 
according to the season, on board of one of the vast steamers 
the colored picture of which was displayed in the windows of 
the wine shops along the street. Above it flaunts the an- 
nouncement of the company, which is German. On the front 
of another liquor saloon is the Savoyard cross. There is a 
symbolism in the juxtaposition. Is it not to the work of the 
Triple Alliance and their military folly that we must attribute 
the flight of these unhappy wretches from their beautiful but 
impoverished country? Even between these two wretched- 
nesses, the agio does not let them alone. The sufficiently 
ironical inscription, Banca Popolare, appears at a corner. 
Blue bills of a hundred or fifty lire are displayed in a glass 
case, tempting the hand. Our companions pause. 



190 OUTRE-MER 

"Do you not think," said the socialist, emphatically, "that 
it would be better to give all this money to the wretches whom 
we have just seen? Besides, what if they should take it? " 

"They will not," said the policeman, philosophically. 
"The habitual crime in this ward is not theft. It is first of 
all knifing, and prostitution also. They sell their women to 
the Chinese over in the neighboring district. The law forbids 
yellow women to live in the United States. But John " — this 
is the American nickname for the natives of the Celestial 
Empire — "John has a great liking for white women, and he 
buys as many as he can with the money he earns or steals. 
For theft is his crime, as drunkenness is that of the Irish. 
Here is their street," he concluded. 

, Italian signs had given place to illegible signs in characters 
of the extreme Orient, and on the narrow sidewalk, which 
here was clean, I heard the clicking of the thick wooden soles 
of the yellow men. Short and fragile, with smooth faces 
under their round hats, with black braids of hair rolled up 
underneath in an oily chignon, they come and go silently. 
Their bodies have no visible form under their wide-sleeved 
blue blouses, and their small feet have still less under the 
flapping of their loose pantaloons. This sort of delicate- 
featured dwarfs, with their loop-shaped eyes, so black in their 
copper-6olored skin, their high cheek-bones, the triangular 
framework of their faces, and their flat noses, gives the impres- 
sion of an invasion of beasts that would spread over all the 
city, gain and gain and destroy everything. There is some- 
thing of the serpent in their fiat faces, and an enigmatic 
endurance in the expression, that seems to receive nothing 
from the surrounding world. 

Since we had left the Italian street, Bazarow appeared to 
have himself become as impassible as these casual foreigners. 
The revolutionary could not but hate them, for they are more 
dangerous enemies to socialism than the most ferocious capi- 



THE LOWER ORDERS "191 

talist, working for almost nothing, with a result always uni- 
form, ever repulsed, never wearied, fifteen and sixteen hours 
on a stretch. In them labor feels itself disgraced; and it is 
constantly necessary to protect them from the wrath of their 
competitors of the white race, whom they would ruin if they 
were left free to do it. In proportion as the agitator grew 
gloomy the detective became more jovial. He found these 
people "great fun." He went into all their shops, handled 
all their wares, clapped them all on the shoulder with his 
broad hand, bursting into roars of laughter. 

The little yellow men winked their black eyes with sly 
humor. They offered us their wares, — tea enclosed in dainty 
boxes, lacquers, stuffs, porcelains, all worthy of a bazaar of 
the twentieth order. But they asked exorbitant prices, and 
kept on smiling when we discussed them, without emotion 
and without insistence. It is not commerce by which they 
live in New York, it is laundry work. They undertake it at 
such low prices that they have monopolized it; they need so 
little ! 

To observe their diet we went into one of their restaurants. 
Prepared dishes, which showed minute handiwork, were wait- 
ing on high round tables; stuffed oranges, first peeled and 
then reclothed in their protecting skins, dressed onions, 
hashes in green leaves, strange crudities betokening 'entirely 
different stomachs, the gastric juice accustomed by a heredity 
of a hundred centuries to dissolve other foods. Everywhere 
the long straight pipes with their little metal furnace betrayed 
the traditional vice, — the terrible taste for opium. 

"You should come back at night to see them smoke; they 
work by day. Between the two they have not much time for 
mischief. If they alone were in New York, Mr. Byrnes would 
not be so busy." 

While the watch-dog of the police thus muttered, looking 
again at Bazarow, the countenance of the latter cleared and 



192 OUTRE-MER 

brightened. His ironical mouth began again to speak. We 
were now in the midst of his adherents, for we had passed 
from the Chinese to the Jewish quarter. These are mostly 
Germans and Poles. Ah ! the invincible, the indestructible 
race, which I find just like itself, just what I have seen in the 
lanes of Tangier and Beyrout and Damascus, and on that 
height of Safed, where, in the synagogue, the old rabbis com- 
ment on the Talmud and proclaim the Liberator. 

Whence came the poor Jews of this quarter? Through what 
abominable Odysseys of persecution have they come, to set 
out in this quarter of New York such displays as only they 
and the Auvergnats have the secret of, — these stalls, where 
the merchant finds a way of selling the unsalable, — old iron, 
old buttons, old bits of wood, old rags? These indescribable 
shops, with their refuse of refuse, encroach upon the side- 
walk. The signs are now in Hebrew. Newsboys are offering 
papers, also in Hebrew. There are swarms of children, attest- 
ing that fruitfulness which the Book promised "as the sand of 
the seashore." Many of these little ones have eyes of mag- 
netic Oriental brilliancy, and we see it also in the eyes of the 
women who are living in all this poverty. 

Now Bazarow is at home. He moves among smiles and 
salutations. He knows every one and every one knows him. 
The uncertain steps of an hour ago become firm to guide us. 
We follow him into several workshops, as much of men as of 
women, where they vi^ork with the needle. We find there, 
ranged under the oversight of the chief, the "boss," thin, 
patient, masculine faces covered with hair, with enormous 
noses, poor, hollow, feminine chests, shoulders sharpened by 
consumption, girls of fifteen as old as grandmothers, who have 
never eaten a bit of meat in their lives, — a long, lamentable 
succession of forms of poverty. 

We could hardly endure the air of these shops, where the 
odor of ill-cared-for bodies mingled with the odor of spoiled 



THE LOWER ORDERS 193 

food, both being exasperated by the heavy odor of the stove. 
We asked these slaves as to the wages they earned. Here the 
figures given by the partisans of revolution became sadly 
correct, a correctness which, thus certified, wrung the heart. 
For a dozen of these little children's trousers, over which 
these hunger-hollowed faces were bent, the contractor pays 
seventy-five cents. The worker cannot make eighteen in 
his best days, by not losing half an hour. Twelve shirts, that 
consumptive women are hurriedly stitching, with needles held 
in feeble hands with bent finger-nails, — yes, twelve of these 
shirts, — bring thirty-one cents, and the worker must pay for 
the cotton ! And even these prices are not sure. Within a 
year wages have been lowered one-half. Who can say what 
they will be to-morrow? Meanwhile, they must sustain life, 
but how? Plates scattered over the tables make reply, filled 
as they are with scraps that would disgust a famished dog. 
These embittered lips bite into them with an avidity that 
appals you. We saw a twelve-year-old girl lay down her work 
to eat where she sits. She was so pale, so emaciated, that tears 
would have come to our eyes though the agitator had not said, 
in a declamatory tone : — 

*' Is it not a shame to humanity? " 

What could we reply, if not that when the strike came this 
human wretchedness would not have even this bone to gnaw? 

January i§. — About eight o'clock in the evening, a fellow 
journalist of New York, Richard Harding Davis, came with 
two friends to take me to the Bowery for a nocturnal expedi- 
tion to succeed that by daylight. This remarkable author, 
one of the first short-story writers of young America, is a man 
of less than thirty years, with a strong face, square and hard- 
featured, burned red by the sun, a snub nose and a square 
chin. It is a typical face of this side of the water, beardless 
and forceful, with the fine-cut features of a strong physiog- 



194 OUTRE-MER 

nomy. There is extreme nervous tension, almost exhaustion, 
in the lines around the mouth and the expression of the eyes. 
And yet the dominant look is of youth and health. Back 
of the overburdened journalist and romance-writer you can 
detect the near presence of the "Princeton man," the student 
who, six or eight winters ago, was captain of some great foot- 
ball team ! 

On leaving the University, Davis became reporter on a great 
Philadelphia daily. This singular calling having put him in 
touch with the lowest rabble of the worst parts of the city, the 
picturesque qualities of these refractories awoke the artist 
within him, and in a series of short stories he has pictured a 
number of these socially doomed characters, of which one, to 
which I have alreadj^ alluded more than once, Gallegher, is a 
masterpiece. In him, with a few strokes, of matchless pre- 
cision, he has painted the Gavroche of this country, the un- 
tamable boy with nerves of steel and indomitable will, i^hom 
you see in the tramways and railroad cars, rushing in by one 
door and out at another, crying his wares, newspapers, novels, 
or fruits, in a high-pitched voice. There is both humor and 
tragedy in the fifty pages of this story, to which I refer the 
reader who may be curious as to American customs. It is the 
result of an observation terribly keen and yet pathetic, darkly 
realistic and yet light-hearted. A sort of untamed whimsi- 
cality works out in healthiness all that might have been atro- 
cious in this etching from nature, and on this January evening, 
when we were rolling in a carriage toward the Bowery, the 
paradise of those whom in Paris we call escarpes, and in New 
York " toughs " and " roughs," Davis was the very talker of his 
story, a fanciful humorist, full of the freshest anecdotes of 
these grotesque figures of vice and crime. 

For example, he told us how the original boy who posed 
for him as Gallegher went to the newspaper office in which the 
sketch appeared, to demand his share of the author's rights. 



THE LOWER ORDERS 195 

He described himself, going out from his father's house in 
Philadelphia, in evening dress, and meeting a thief with 
whom, for the purpose of study, he had fraternized incognito 
in a low gambling-house. The thief approached him with a 
wink : — 

" What are you doing here ? Are you butler in this house ? " 
And as the writer amused himself with answering in the 
afifirmative, he went on, — 

" When you rob it, don't forget me. I'll be in with you." 
On this good promise, with a hearty hand shake, the two 
parted. 

While he was charming us thus with his rendering of a 
coarse conversation, mimicked with a sort of genius which ex- 
plained to me his success as an author, that gift of his for 
making his words flow and almost gesticulate, we arrived at 
the central police station, where the other morning I had seen 
Mr. Byrnes smile into the face of the courageous Mr. Clark. 
We were to take another detective this evening, who, however, 
showed the same broad shoulders and the same quiet intrepid- 
ity as the former. Social species in these singular callings 
work out a uniformity of type not to be surpassed by natural 
species. 

This one, like his colleague, professed an idolatry for Mr. 
Byrnes and a passionate love of his calling. As a hunter of 
big game never spares you a single one of the lions and tigers 
that he has shot, and spreads out before you skin after skin, 
showing you the bullet hole, so the policemen would have us 
look over hundreds of photographs of criminals arrested in 
New York during the last few years. The predominant char- 
acteristics of these heroes of robbery and murder are a wander- 
ing or a maniacal expression, and sadness. You can count the 
laughing faces — and what laughs they are ! insolent, defiant, 
sneering. Still less numerous are faces that reveal intelli- 
gence. When it occurs, it is so concentrated, so visibly 



196 OUTRE-MER 

turned in upon itself, so armed and defiant, that it frightens 
you even in this impotent reflection, emanating from these 
inert pictures. I think that if ever I meet them in life I shall 
recognize the eyes of one of these photographs among others, 
those of a man of thirty, condemned for forgery, whom the 
detective gazed upon with undissembled admiration, murmur- 
ing, "He was a great man." 

As in memory I compare this collection of portraits with a 
similar one of French criminals, which I have had in my 
hands in Paris, it seems to me that those of this country are 
more bitter, more sinister, more entirely unclassed, more 
implacable, and especially more perverse. I sought in vain 
among them for the features, so common in Latin countries, 
of the man who has fallen through weakness — the near neigh- 
bor of him who remains respectable through circumstances. 

Are these things really so, or have I, in this view, taken up 
with general theories, so natural to a traveller? Neither did 
it seem to me that the collection of confiscated articles tend- 
ing to prove criminality was made up as it would have been 
made with us. Roulette tables alternated with revolvers, 
night sand-bags with burglars' tools, counterfeiters' moulds 
and dies with engraved plates for counterfeit bank bills. One 
would say that thieves were more industrious here and — how 
shall I express it ? — less occasional in their criminal acts. The 
detective showed us a saw with which a celebrated criminal 
had dismembered the corpse of his victim. To wring from 
him a confession of his crime, another detective conceived 
the plan of walking by night clothed in a shroud, and moan- 
ing, up and down a corridor, which we also visited, on which 
the criminal's cell opened. The murderer believed he saw 
the ghost of his victim and confessed his crime. 

"For all that," said one of our companions, in disgust, "it 
was not fair play." 

That is the true Anglo-Saxon cry, with all the innate horror 



THE LOWER ORDERS 197 

of the race for subterfuge and falsehood. Hearing it, I recall 
to mind a similar indignation experienced by a young girl, in 
whose presence was related a story of the delightful hypocrisy 
of a Sicilian prince of the last century. Sick unto death, he 
vowed to build a Chartreuse if he should recover. He did 
recover, and to reconcile his devotion with his avarice he 
hit upon the device of building in his park, at the gates of 
Palermo, a pavilion in the form of a monastery, which may yet 
be seen. The word "Certosa" still adorns the entrance, and 
the half-score of cells are inhabited by the figures of monks, 
but in wax, among which is found an Abelard occupied in 
writing to Heloise ! 

" What a shame I " was the only word which this charmingly 
humorous anecdote called from the American girl's lips. She 
saw in it only a want of conscience, and ignoble insincerity. 
Our friend of this evening is not far from the same judgment 
of the perfidy used in the matter of the dissector of corpses, 
and I am sure he will not willingly give his hand to the in- 
ventive policeman who devised this cunning trick. 

Upon this discussion we went downstairs to the street, and 
this time we went on foot. It was nine o'clock, and already 
all the houses were closing. Nocturnal life exists only in 
Paris. In New York, as in London, all the house-fronts are 
dark long before midnight strikes. Only the "saloons" con- 
tinue to blaze forth from the ground floors of buildings, large 
and small. On the counters are prepared by the score such 
ingredients as were wittily defined by a Bacchic poet of Louis 
XIII. 's time, "spurs to much drinking." There are salted 
biscuits and smoked fish, ham, and fried oysters. A betting- 
machine stands in a corner, like the swivels that decorate the 
wine shops of Paris, with this difference, that here they only 
play for whiskeys or cocktails, and also that the ball is here 
replaced by a whole poker deck. One of those ingenious 
inventions which the American is never weary of inventing 



198 OUTRE-MER 

causes these cards to come and go under glass each time that 
a silver dollar falls into a slot arranged ad hoc. A "full" 
appears, or a sequence, or two pairs, or a flush, or some 
other figure, and this sufifices to give the poor devils who are 
playing thus their evening dissipation, the illusory mirage of 
such a game as they like. 

They are standing in the blinding light of gas or electricity, 
already, at this hour, so drunk they cannot move. Almost all 
of them, even in this low part of the town, have that air of being 
all but wtW dressed, which gave me the first day an impression 
as of a whole city dressed from a shop of ready-made clothes. 
How many have I seen, Americans of all classes, dressed in 
this all but good, style, carrying a tiny valise of leather paper, 
with a change of collar and cuffs ! In the morning they go to 
the barber's, after taking a bath in the dressing-room of their 
hotel bedroom. One negro brushes their boots, another their 
hat and clothes. A narrow line of white linen at the wrist 
and neck, and above the large Ascot necktie which hides the 
shirt another line of white linen, and you have a gentleman 
whose neatness will hold good till the midnight bar. 

They end by going into one of these bars. From eight to 
a dozen "gentlemen " of this type were discussing matters over 
their glasses, in which preserved cherries were floating between 
slices of lemon. For the moment they were intensely inter- 
ested in comparing the chances of the Californian, Corbett, 
and the Englishman, Mitchell, who were to have a match 
at Jacksonville, Florida. A number of portraits of cele- 
brated athletes, in fighting costume, which hung on the 
walls, bore witness to the admiration of the saloon-keeper 
and to his secret business. No doubt he arranges those 
clandestine matches which Davis has so accurately described 
in his Gallegher, tickets of admission to which cost a hun- 
dred, or two hundred, dollars. He was a German, and 
with his crafty bluish eyes, set in his broad, pallid face, he 



^' 



THE LOWER ORDERS 199 

glanced at the detective, who seemed not to know him, though 
he knew him very well. Both indifference and a feeling of 
equality spoke in that glance. With the secret history of 
elections in the United States, who can tell whether a simple 
saloon-keeper is not one of the chief suborners of votes for 
the party in power? Was there some consciousness of this 
strength in the calmness of this German, as also in the attitude 
of the infamous customers of this obscure patron, who smoke 
great cigars at half a dollar apiece, with all the serenity of the 
gods of Lucretius? They appear to be little disturbed by the 
moral campaign announced in the last few weeks. Two new 
visitors came into the resort, and talked German with the 
liquor-dealer. Decidedly, New York is not only the true 
Cosmopolis of the idle and the dilettante, but a monstrous 
crucible in which all the adventurers and the needy of the 
whole world meet, mingle, blend together to form a new 
people. What people? 

Blend? Does this intimate mixture of elements, so far 
from solvable, which we call "raee," really take place? As 
far as the yellow race goes, we can boldly reply, no. What 
strange power keeps these people so unsusceptible to surround- 
ings, so capable of abstracting themselves from those around 
them, — insulating themselves, if we may so speak ? I received 
a new proof of this that very night, as I left that den to go 
to the Chinese theatre, a few steps distant. 

Upon the stage the actors, men disguised as women, all 
painted and dressed, — painted in bright colors that lacquered 
their faces, dressed in heavy stufl's, embossed, embroidered, 
stiff and shining, — -act or rather mimic, with slow, infrequent 
gestures, a scene in an interminable play. A stringed instru- 
ment, harsh and monotonous, accompanied this phantom- 
like representation with a moaning, creaking sound, \^'hat 
did I say about gestures? During the half- hour that we spent 



200 OUTRE-MER 

there the seven actors did not make twenty motions between 
them. 

The scene represented the interior of a pagoda opening 
upon a garden, and called forth, no doubt, action enough to 
sustain the interest of a public who utter not a word, and 
neither laugh nor applaud. 

There are five hundred of these copper-colored men in the 
audience, motionless, in their working clothes, every one like 
all the others, in his round hat, his braided queue of black 
hair, his ample blouse of dark blue, and those everlasting ser- 
pent faces, spanned by long, shining, inexpressive eyes. Not 
one of them appears to observe our presence, although we 
must have made some noise as we went down the passage be- 
tween the seats toward the stage. You feel them to be for- 
eigners, to a degree inconceivable — impenetrable and above 
all unintelligible. These unresolvable differences show them- 
selves in their choice of amusement and its quality; for our 
amusements are ourselves, our individuality, our tastes, 
whereas our labor often only interprets to us the slavery 
of our surroundings. 

This theatre, and the hypnotic automatism of the play, had 
nothing in common with the sort of diversion which we 
seek for in a play. And in the same way, the coarse atid 
mechanical drunkenness on alcohol — our drunkenness — has 
nothing in common with the intellectual poisoning by opium, 
which is ever the favorite vice of these people. One must 
see how some of them abandon themselves to the delights of 
this terrible drug, immediately on leaving the theatre, to un- 
derstand how this mania for stupefactives corresponds in these 
natures to profound, and doubtless indestructible, instincts. 
The two impressions complete one another with singular 
power. 

On leaving the theatre, twenty steps brought us to the door 
of one of the cellar rooms which serve these maniacs as dream 



THE LOWER ORDERS 201 

caverns. By the light of a half-lowered gas-burner, we saw 
an emaciated Chinaman lying on a matting which covered a 
stone bench running around the wall. With supple fingers 
he felt about in a pot filled with a blackish substance. With 
a stout metal needle he adroitly and surely rolled up a thick 
pellet, which he warmed at a flame. Then, with the point of 
the same needle, without haste, with the same adroit and accu- 
rate motion, he inserted the burning pellet in the metal bowl 
of his pipe, and drew a few whiffs. The pipe was smoked 
out, and he began operations over again, his eyes swimming 
in a luxurious languor. Twenty such operations, and he will 
be like the stout man whose figure is visible in the depths of 
the cellar, bloated, livid, and motionless, deep in visions, 
from which no human force could ravish him. 

A smiling and supple personage — the keeper of the cellar — 
runs hither and thither, preparing pipes and opium for other 
customers, who are awaiting their turn to abandon themselves 
to the charm of this mysterious and deadly ecstasy. The 
solitude and taciturnity of this dissipation make the place 
almost tragic. No loud voices, not even a word. There is 
a solemnity as of initiation in the attitudes to which the devo- 
tees of this artificial paradise abandon themselves, and this 
debauch appears at once less vile and more criminal, less dis- 
gusting and more incurable, than that on whiskey or brandy. 
Certainly it is so different that a shudder, as of a nightmare, 
creeps over us, and we leave this den with a sense of relief. 

Chinese lanterns light up the lower end of the street with 
their fantastic light. A turn of the corner, and they have 
again given place to gas, and opium to alcohol. Now "sa- 
loons" follow "saloons." A gigantic and obsequious police- 
man, Whom the detective had picked up to guide us through 
the opium dens, suddenly stops before a tall building, which 
he points out with a gesture of pride. 

"Well," he says, with most comical emphasis, "you may 



202 OUTRE-MER 

be globe-trotters, but you will never find any place like the 
Bismarck of New York. Do you want to go in? " 

We assent, and he explains — Oh irony of human glory! — 
that the Bismarck is simply a lodging-house at twelve, ten, or 
seven cents a night. Immediately entering a dark passageway, 
we saw him conferring with the doorkeeper of this dormitory 
of poverty. The latter, after some affected objections, — the 
prelude to a tip only too intelligible to one who knows the 
lack of conscience of the American policeman, — permits us 
to ascend a badly lighted staircase, pervaded with an abomi- 
nable odor. A door opens on the first landing. We parley 
again, and enter an immense room, heated almost beyond the 
breathing-point by a colossal iron stove. 

There, in a vapor hardly pierced by an occasional lamp, we 
dimly see a double row of beds of rubber cloth, literally 
heaped with human beings, some draped in remnants of rags, 
others entirely undressed. 'Ihe wretches were all plunged in 
that death-like sleep in which life yet renews its deepest ener- 
gies. We could see by the position of their limbs that they 
had not lain down, but fallen down, sunk down, exhausted 
as they were. The soles of their feet, black with the mire of 
the streets, told of aimless wanderings by sidewalk or street. 
The emaciated faces of those who had unragged themselves — 
one must create words to describe the nameless divestment of 
these nameless tatters — followed us with their eyes, passively, 
stupidly. We seemed to them the apparitions of a dream, 
seen through the double vapor of this heavy air and of their 
overwhelming lassitude. 

Yet these sleepers are the favored ones. The sort of ham- 
mock in which they are reposing must be a singular luxury, 
since to procure such ease they have spent two cents extra. 
Two cents' worth of bread ! Two cents' worth of whiskey, of 
tobacco ! The lodgers of the floor above sleep on boards. 
Those of the third story, on the floor — hard indeed, in its 



THE LOWER ORDERS 203 

pestilential promiscuity. But it is not the street, it is not 
the January night, so cruel to poor exhausted flesh. This is 
the thought that I distinctly read on the delicate, weary face 
of a white-bearded old man, who had taken off his jacket, 
seated on the floor of the last of the three dormitories, a veri- 
table phantom of human want, never to be forgotten, with the 
anatomy of his emaciated body, with tufts of grizzly hair on 
the projecting ribs. 

Looking at him, I recalled to mind that this very evening I 
had been invited to a ball in one of the palaces on Fifth 
Avenue. Without regret I had sacrificed that festivity to this 
visit. The house rose up before my mind, decorated with 
roses at a dollar apiece, illuminated by the dress of women 
who bear on their persons twenty-five, a hundred, two hun- 
dred thousand francs' worth of precious stones. The cham- 
pagne which is poured out at the buffet costs five dollars a 
bottle. And the roses will fade before any one has so much 
as taken the time to inhale the sweetness of their perfume, and 
not one of those diamonds and rubies has dissipated a sad 
thought of those who wear them, and these lovely lips will 
barely have touched the cups in which sparkles the monoto- 
nous beverage. These contrasts between the frightful reality 
of certain sufferings and the useless insanity of certain luxu- 
ries, explain, better than the most eloquent theories, why, at 
certain times, a rage simply to destroy such a society takes 
possession of certain minds. 

The extortionate policeman, who might have been detailed 
to mount guard over that ball, as he has been charged to guard 
the Bowery lodging-houses, is as proud of the excess of poverty 
into which he initiates us as his Fifth Avenue colleague would 
be of the ostentation of the festivity. He jocularly repeats 
his former remark : — 

" Well, have you seen anywhere in the world such a place 
as the Bismarck?" 



204 OUTRE-MER 

And standing on the threshold, breathing the free night air 
with all the breadth of his robust lungs, he adds: — 

"Now you know, gentlemen, how much a breath of fresh 
air is worth." 

Decidedly, this humorist is determined to earn his fee; for 
perceiving that we are moved by the sight of that inauspicious 
hostelry, he invites us to dispel these visions of sadness by 
a descent into another cellar, inhabited by an Italian. " There 
is always ?,ovcit jollification there," he says. 
• The word is untranslatable, like the jolly from which it is 
derived, and which signifies good-humored gayety, good- 
natured practical jokes, a certain rough grace of good health. 
Upon this, I ask him of what nationality are most of the 
inhabitants of the Bismarck. According to him, Germans 
and Irish predominate. Americans, properly so-called, are 
rarely found there. For that matter, one might ahnost think, 
on exploring the lower quarters of the city, that there are none 
in New York, or else that they are all rich, so many are the 
foreigners we have met to-night and the other night. We find 
more foreigners in the nocturnal trattoria to which our guide 
introduces us. But the promised jollification is limited to a 
sight of an evidently embarrassed patron, irritated under his 
constrained politeness. While the three compatriots with whom 
he was conversing went on smoking their long cigars of chaff, 
and emptying their fiasco of Chianti, without looking at us, 
the big haggard man, with crafty eyes, assured us, in a tone 
which suggested the penitentiary : — 

" You may see everything in my house. I have nothing to 
hide." He repeated "nothing to hide — nothing to hide," 
four times over. What act of conspiracy, smuggling, or prosti- 
tution had we interrupted by our entrance? The policeman 
must have known, for he drew us out of the cavern with as 
much eagerness as he had before used in urging us in. He 



THE LOWER ORDERS 205 

claimed to be at the end of his beat and we left him, to finish 
this night of low investigation in a series of public balls and 
beer-gardens. 

January i8. — This morning, D , K , and I paid a 

visit to the two islands in the East River, Blackwell's and 
Ward's, where are the insane asylum and the penitentiary. 
We were to meet Mr. Clark, the detective, who accompanied 
us the other day, at the door of the Tombs. This is the 
municipal prison of the city, containing also a police court 
and a court of special sessions. New York slang has bap- 
tized it with this funereal and symbolic title because of the 
large and heavy Egyptian columns of the peristyle. 

The calling of a detective does not lend itself to punctu- 
ality in keeping appointments, and Mr. Clark is on duty. 
He sends us word by one of his "policemen " that he will join 
us later "if he gets through in time," which signifies that the 
worthy bloodhound is on the scent; who knows, perhaps only 
a few steps away, in one of these streets? Perhaps the crimi- 
nal that he is tracing is still hurriedly treading these side- 
walks with despairing step, casting searching glances over 
the houses which seem to us so insignificant, but which to 
him may prove an asylum or a place of destruction. 

They stretch out in long rows, commonplace, enigmatic, 
betraying no secrets that they may have, while another "car," 
then an elevated railway, then another "car," carry us to 
Bellevue Hospital. Close by, a small wooden wharf serves 
as point of departure for the ferry-boat, which daily carries 
to the islands the men and women under sentence and rela- 
tives of the insane persons. A cell-like wagon arrives almost 
at the same time as ourselves, bringing its load of convicts. 
The people give it the classic nickname of "Black Maria." 
Its occupants, who will not return until after months or years, 
if ever they return, get down carelessly. They are swallowed 



206 OUTRE-MER 

up in rooms arranged in the sides of the boat, while the deck 
is crowded with poor folk, women especially, carrying baskets 
filled with provision for some unhappy being, to whom this is 
all that remains of joy! 

The boat puts off. It is operated by men in brown uniform, 
many of them negroes; they are working out here their purifi- 
cation from a long sentence. 

We begin to converse with the "boss," while the strange 
floating house glides over the curling waters, that wash against 
the boat with loud surgings. We pass other ferry-boats, tugs, 
merchant vessels. A sharp wind is blowing, the sky seems as 
if contracted by the cold tension of a black snow-cloud. 
The shore line of the city is a shabby, so to speak soiled, 
coast, with a leprosy of mean buildings and dark beaches, 
where are collected the unclean refuse of the approach to a 
capital. The "boss,'' whose trade it is to transport poverty, 
folly, and crime along this scene of buildings and rubbish, 
is a jovial old man, who serenely chews his quid and ejects 
his streams of saliva while watching over his crew. He opens 
for us two cabins, into which he has bolted the guests of the 
"Black Maria." 

That of the men contains about ten individuals. Their 
debased and unexpressive faces do not even speak of the reso- 
lution of "tramps," as they call the wayfarers whom one sees 
trailing along the New York streets, picking up ends of cigars 
with pride. The women seem more vivacious and more tragic. 
There are seven: three Irish, three Germans, one negress. 
The seventh alone is a true American. Of the unhappy creat- 
ures who compose the crew, those who are not black are also 
all Europeans. 

The " boss " points out a Frenchman who has strayed in 
among the others. He is from Picardy, and came to the 
United States after the war. Why? He does not confess this 
any more than the crime that brought him first to the peni- 



THE LOWER ORDERS 207 

tentiary and afterward to this boat. He tells us of his arrival 
here, the first few years, his solitude, the too hard work — 
he was a slater — the too implacable people. He is probably 
telling the truth on these points; you feel that, by the severity 
of his words. No trace of his fine national humor survives in 
him, not even the mocking flattery by which the Latin takes 
his last and useless revenge, when he is vanquished by too 
severe civilization. He is really too thoroughly vanquished. 

Perceiving his wretchedness in infamy, I regret less that the 
figure of French immigration into this terrible country is so 
low. Statistics figure it at fifty thousand four hundred and 
sixty heads in the last ten years. On the other hand, America 
has received during the same period, a million four hundred 
and fifty-two thousand nine hundred and fifty-two Germans. 
What a formidable sum of certain temptations, of probable 
crime, is represented by such an afflux of adventurers ! One 
shudders at it, when one examines some authentic examples 
taken from life. 

There is the same singular collection of foreigners, male 
and female, between the walls of the two asylums for the in- 
sane which we visited; the first on the more distant island. 
Ward's, the second on the nearer, Blackwell's. But for this 
peculiarity, which proves how disastrous is the over-pressure 
of American life to nervous systems not native to the country, 
these buildings are like others of the same kind in all lands. 
I shall long see before me among the men a German from 
Koenigsberg, who believed himself to be the old Emperor 
William; with his curled moustache, he talked and swore, 
marching up and down with threatening gestures. And among 
the women I shall not soon forget a Norwegian, with soft, 
sea-colored eyes, who sat at the piano and played a vague air, 
a thousand times repeated. 

Both buildings are kept with that perfect adaptation of ma- 
terial convenience which distinguishes America and England. 



208 OUTRE-MER 

The principle here, as I liad already observed when visiting 
the Boston hospitals, is to assure autonomy to each establish- 
ment. Each, from the least to the greatest, must suffice for 
itself. Each must have its own bake-shop, its own laundry, 
and its own laboratory for preparing its own medicines. 

With this independence of each establishment there is 
much more freedom of initiative. If there is an experiment 
to try, an invention to apply, there is no need of going through 
administrative red tape and awaiting an order from the cen- 
tral power. Each one makes its own conditions, and this 
absence of official supervision, so much admired by people 
so highly centralized as we, may well have its disastrous as- 
pects. We received that impression from a few words which 
one of the doctors said to us with an air of triumph. We had 
asked to see the violent cases. 

"We have none here," he replied, 

"How is that?" we asked. 

"We have none," he repeated. 

"But if those who are not violent should become so?" 

"Oh," he replied, "we should soon quiet them." 

"May we see your appliances? " 

"We have no appliances," replied the physician, proudly, 
"we believe that physical constraint is degrading to the pa- 
tient; we prefer to use chemical restraint." 

"They drug them to death," whispered K . 

Was he right? After this we always imagined that we saw 
in the eyes of those we met the numb stupor of opium or 
morphine, although the doctor affirmed that both these sub- 
stances are forbidden. A gloomy terror seemed to reign over 
the asylum for men, while in that of the women we were 
touched by an air of pleasantness, almost of gayety. 

The halls and corridors were hung with flowered paper; 
Christmas trees, with their fruits of stuffed cotton, still re- 
mained from the festival of the preceding month. Bananas 



1 



THE LOWER ORDERS 209 

of yellow cloth alternated with oranges of red plush. The 
tender home instinct, imperishable in the heart of woman, and 
that maternal instinct that abides even through insanity, had 
suggested to the inmates a graceful and touching thought — 
that of placing around the Christmas trees large dolls, dressed 
in warm garments, to take the place of the children for whom 
they had imagined themselves to be preparing their gifts. 
And yet, with all the care they had taken thus to adorn their 
place of confinement, they were truly prisoners, and they 
knew it. All of them said in thought what one of them said 
aloud, — a white-haired negress who was giving a warm cloak 
to another. The latter laughed with pleasure at the warmth 
of the garment. 

"How happy she is," said one of our party. "What more 
can she want? " 

"To be free," replied the old blackamoor, and both paused, 
the one in her kindly adjustment of the garment, the other in 
her laugh, and looked toward the window, with the longing 
eyes of a caged animaL 

And how sad a reminder of liberty was the view from that 
window ! the broad island plain, sterile and bare. Sorry trees 
grew here and there in shapeless fields, greenish with a scraggy, 
worn-out turf, across which meandered the gray lines of unused 
paths. The clouds hung low in the sky; in the distance were 
two barrack-like buildings. One is the workhouse, the charity 
building, the other is the penitentiary. 

We finished our day by a visit to this prison. Mr. Clark 
was now our guide ; we found him waiting for us outside the 
insane hospital. How did the police watch-dog know that we 
were there — precisely there and nowhere else? We did not 
particularly wonder at this small proof of his professional scent, 
any more than at the carriage which he had found for us — 
where ? — in this desert plain. 



210 OUTRE-MER 

We had not been ten minutes in it when we began to see 
convicts laboring in some earthworks. But for their uni- 
forms of white, with broad dark stripes, we might have taken 
them for workingmen at their ordinary task. Absorption in 
work is so essential a characteristic of American life that these 
convicts seemed not different from free workmen. Their 
countenances were not more sad than those of engineers on 
their locomotives, or smelters in their foundry. 

The prisoners became more frequent as we drew nearer to 
the huge building on the height. Arriving there, we had no 
need to parley, as at the door of the Bismarck. Our guide 
felt himself quite at home in these great barracks, of which 
he is one of the most skilful purveyors. We followed him 
through them, especially interested in the rows of cells, in 
which we again perceived the spirit of the country. Their 
strong iron gratings opened upon a broad passageway, afford- 
ing the greatest facilities for surveillance. They are narrow, 
high, and so arranged as to admit of two superimposed beds, 
like those of a steamer cabin. A placard above the door bore 
the names of the inmates, 

I read a few of these, corroborating my recent observa- 
tions ; most of them are not of this country. The terms are 
short, — six months, a year, two years at most. In general, a 
fine is added of one, two, or five hundred dollars. When the 
convict has no money, he works out his fine at the rate of a 
dollar a day. The fare is decent, almost comfortable when 
one thinks of the bitter poverty of the Bowery. The men are 
called up at half-past five ; at half-past six they have bread 
and coffee, at noon they have meat, at half-past five bread, 
soup, and coffee. At six they are locked in, with permission to 
read until ten. 

Their librarian was seated at a table in one of the galleries, 
classifying tickets. Even in his convict's dress, his intelligent 
and serious countenance, his white hands and quiet application, 



THE LOWER ORDERS 211 

attested the " gentleman." He, too, was a foreigner, an Eng- 
lishman of excellent family, guilty of having enjoyed club life, 
sport, gaming, and general elegance, by means of checks too 
dextrously made. He was here employed in the work for 
which he appeared to be best fitted, and this is the case with 
all of them. 

The workshops were, therefore, filled with workmen, who 
do excellent work at a low cost. In pavilions surrounding 
the central building there was a forge and a cabinet shop, 
a shoe factory and a locksmithy, and so on through the whole 
range of trades. We saw rows of tailors, painters, book- 
binders, clockmakers, peacefully at work. They would have 
needed only to have lived this way in their time of freedom 
to be happy. And yet if their freedom were given them,, not one 
of them, Mr. Clark assured us, would maintain in the slightest 
degree the habit of work which they now seem to have formed^ 
Most of them are recidivists who have taken, quitted, and 
taken again the road to the disciplinary workshop, without this 
active use of their hours of servitude in the least affecting their 
perverse wills. 

What part of their internal machinery is it that is so radically 
perverted? In this land of all enterprises they have tried to 
create, not very far from here at Elmira, a reformatory, a sort 
of rural hospital, precisely that they may reach this hidden 
spring. It appears not to have had much success, and hence 
they are coming to the pessimistic conclusion that the best 
solution of these problems, as of all that touch upon social 
maladies, is simply an efficient police force. The thought is 
too terrible, and yet it seems to be only too much in keeping 
with human nature. Some men are born foxes, wolves, and 
tigers ; others are born watch-dogs. I came to this view of 
the fundamental duality of the human race while walking the 
streets of New York behind Bazarow and Mr. Clark. It struck 
me again as I heard the latter say aloud : — 



212 OUTRE-MER 

*' Ha ! There is my quarry ! " And he pointed to a turner, 
a young fellow of twenty years, broad-shouldered and sturdy, 
with a coarsely vicious face. 

" I arrested him with this hand," said Mr. Clark, opening 
and closing his hairy hands. The convict leaned over his work 
without appearing to recognize the detective, but he turned as 
soon as Mr. Clark had walked on, and followed him with an 
expression of mingled fear and hatred, speaking at the same 
time a few words to his neighbor. But Mr. Byrnes's bulldog 
cared no more for that than the dog that ran down one hart 
and is chasing another cares for the former's furious or sup- 
pliant glare. 

I might extract hundreds of such pages from my traveUing- 
journal. Will these suffice to make concrete the objection 
urged by my New York friend against the somewhat official 
and determined optimism of the two great Catholic arch- 
bishops? At any rate, they will suffice to throw a full light 
upon the fact which appears to me to dominate the entire his- 
tory of the social movement in the United States, and to explain 
its apparent contradictions. 

This fact is the presence in the lower classes of a foreign 
contingent so considerable that at certain times the American, 
born in America, of American parents, seems to be a sort of 
aristocrat ; too proud to serve any master whatever, too intel- 
ligent to subject himself to small details of business, naturally 
destined by virtue of his inventive genius, perseverance, will, 
to draft into his service these hordes of immigrants whose labor 
he unfeelingly uses and pays for. 

This paradox hardly overstates the truth. To be convinced 
of this it needs only to examine a table of statistics — in one of 
the almanacs issued every year by the newspapers, for exam- 
ple ; and these incontestable figures give a still more significant 
import to this foreign contingent when one has just visited the 



I 



THE LOWER ORDERS 213 

parts of New York where Italians, Germans, Irish, Poles, Jews, 
and Chinese swarm and struggle in poverty. 

In the first place, observe that this formidable immigration is 
entirely of recent date. From 1789 to 1820 hardly two hun- 
dred and fifty thousand colonists left Europe for the United 
States, or only nine thousand men a year. The newcomers of 
this period were very soon taken up into the American organ- 
ism, which still possesses a remarkable power of assimilation. 
But assimilation has its limits. And figures show the gradual 
rising of the flood which by degrees passed these Um.its. 

After 1820 the number of immigrants increased year by year 
tenfold, almost a hundredfold. It reached twenty-three thou- 
sand three hundred and twenty- two in 1830, eighty-four thou- 
sand and sixty- six in 1840. The result of the events of 1848 
and 1849 was to carry these figures in 1850 to three hundred 
and sixty-nine thousand seven hundred and eighty-six. The 
Franco-German War and the Commune reacted still more 
strongly upon this invasion of the New World by the desperate 
inhabitants of the Old. In the year 1872 four hundred and 
five thousand eight hundred and six, in 1873 ^^^^ hundred 
and fifty-nine thousand eight hundred and three expatriated 
men came here to seek — what ? They themselves did not 
know. 

We must look at totals in order to gauge as a whole the 
astounding phenomenon of a tide of men, or rather of nations, 
breaking upon this continent. In the two decades before the 
present one, the United States received from Europe, between 
1871 and 1880, more than three million immigrants; between 
1 88 1 and 1890, more than five and a half millions. The popula- 
tion was therefore increased one-twelfth in these last ten years, 
by means of foreign accession, and this accession was solely, 
exclusively composed of workingmen. 

Look through any guide-book you like, you will find that in 
Chicago, out of about eleven hundred thousand inhabitants, 



A 



214 OUTRE-MER 

there are four hundred thousand Germans, two hundred and 
twenty thousand Irish, ninety thousand Norwegians, Danes, 
and Swedes, fifty thousand Poles, fifty thousand Bohemians. 
In Milwaukee two hundred and five thousand, or more than 
half the population, are Germans. There are a hundred and fifty 
thousand Germans in St. Louis. Denver, which in 1880 had 
thirty-five thousand inhabitants, now has a hundred and fifty 
thousand, an increase of, say, a hundred and fifteen thousand, 
all minors and foreigners. St. Paul and Minneapolis are 
Scandinavian cities, and San Francisco is entirely peopled 
with immigrants from all parts, including twenty-five thousand 
Chinese. 

In the face of such evidences of an interior invasion so 
impetuous and so recent, we must see that the majority of 
the newcomers cannot possibly be Americans except in name. 
The United States did, indeed, assimilate the newcomers with 
marvellous rapidity so long as work was chiefly in the fields, 
while the great modern cities did not yet exist ; before 1 840 
there was not a single city in America of more than five 
hundred thousand souls. Especially when these newcomers, 
immediately scattered abroad upon farms, did not form a 
compact, almost solid crowd, as irresistible and formidable as 
one of the elements. 

This assimilating power was still miraculous thirty years ago, 
when the War of Secession recreated and strengthened Ameri- 
can self-consciousness in a community of discipline and danger. 
One proof among a thousand may be given, — very slight but 
very remarkable. Before this war the Germans, under pretext 
of athletic meetings, had founded a group of revolutionary soci- 
eties with the title Socialistischer Turnenbund. Before i860 
they were all radical, international, and Germanic. At the close 
of the war they had all, very naturally, become national and 
conservative, in a word, American. But in the last thirty years 
by what means can this assimilation have been exercised over 



THE LOWER ORDERS 215 

these serried masses hastily engulfed in the labor of great indus- 
trial cities ? 

All these, landed but yesterday, may, indeed, dye themselves 
with Americanism, which for them generally means to drop off 
the feeble remnant of moral prejudice which clung to them from 
their previous life. They even learn to speak the language 
brokenly, though the greater number of them continue to use 
their native tongue. The proof of this is, that always in the 
courts accused and witnesses are interrogated through inter- 
preters. It would be folly to suppose that their ideas have 
changed, their deepest aspirations been modified, their soul, in 
fact, metamorphosed. Once upon the soil of the United States, 
they remain the violent, desperate folk that they were upon the 
steamer ; all the more that, in this country of their last illusion, 
they have met the same necessity for work as in the Old World, 
and a still sharper competition. They landed with all the moral 
dispositions of which revolutionaries are made, and they have 
remained revolutionaries, ready to follow those of their number 
who have brought hither from Europe their fierce and feverish 
Utopias, their furor for agitation, and their methods of organi- 
zation. 

Thus is explained the sudden development in this free 
democracy of a socialism most incompatible with all the past 
of the United States, with all their tendencies and their con- 
stitution, bursting out in disorders as formidable as the recent 
strikes of Chicago and California, in adventures as grotesquely 
threatening as the formation of the Coxey army and its march 
upon Washington. I^ook closely at it. These episodes pre- 
sage not a social war, but a war of races. 

The true American workingman — for he exists — is just 
such a man as Monsignors Gibbons and Ireland depicted, 
respectful to law, proud, above all, of the Constitution which 
he loyally obeys, and without hatred of capital. At his side 



216 OUTRE-MER 

swarms the immense crowd of workingmen of foreign race, 
ignorant of the history of a country which is to them only 
a last card to play against destiny, not understanding this 
country, — I might say hating it for all the disappointments 
they have undergone. 

A few months ago, going along the Missouri, I was gazing 
upon the former America of other days, through the America 
of to-day, and the first struggle for extermination between the 
redskins and the Anglo-Saxons of the last century. This first 
outgrowth of civilization ends again in a conflict between men 
of alien blood. Will the Grand Republic, issued from the 
first Massachusetts colonists, so closely, so necessarily Anglo- 
Saxon in language and laws, uprise, be broken and destroyed 
by these foreign elements, these last few years, seeing that 
she seems no longer to absorb and transform in the same way 
as formerly? Class struggle is here only an appearance; at the 
bottom is an ethnic duel, and one may follow its motions in 
the history of the "labor movement," as they say here, detail 
by detail, almost year by year. 

One of the best-informed economists of this country. Pro- 
fessor Richard Ely, has written this history with much con- 
scientiousness and impartiality. Although he has placed 
himself simply at the point of view of an analyst, the succes- 
sion of facts, as he gives them, shows at once the alternation 
of one current with the other, the American current and the 
foreign, in this vast flood of the laboring inundation. Thus 
also, at their confluence, the two shades of color in the waters 
persist long without mingling. 

Would you, first of all, see the American soul at its work? 
See it struggling with those first experiments in communistic 
organization which it attempted, and which in madness of 
principle exceed the worst Utopias of the most extravagant 
collectivism. You will find this soul here like itself, — all 
will and in consequence, first of all, occupied with problems 



THE LOWER ORDERS 217 

of responsibility; — all action and in consequence, deeply, 
thoroughly realistic in the details of its enterprise, even when 
the final aim is a chimera. 

For example, there is the community of Perfectionists at 
Oneida, senseless as it was in its first conception. A graduate 
of Yale founded it, in company with other graduates of the 
same university. These young men were so exhilarated with 
their absurd logic that they included free love in their scheme, 
on the ground that exclusivism is no less culpable where the 
person than where property is concerned. When you study the 
practical regulations of a society whose principles are so con- 
trary to the most profound instinct of human nature, you are 
thunderstruck on seeing men, of doctrines so Utopian, become 
psychologically most wise and accurate in their application. 
To cite only one illustration, you will find mutual criticism 
an organic feature of this singular community, the right of 
public and reciprocal criticism, "in order," they say, "to 
utilize the wasted power of observation which in the world is 
squandered in gossip and useless slander." Look into the 
financial result of their experiment, and you will be convinced 
of their sagacious administration by the balance-sheet of their 
final settlement. Having, in 1881, abandoned their plan of 
reform and resolved themselves into a simple co-operative 
society, their assets were found to be six hundred thousand 
dollars for two hundred persons, or three thousand dollars 
apiece. They had begun with the most insignificant capital. 

So with another community, not less exceptional in its 
principles, the Shakers of Mount Lebanon. Under their 
religious mysticism, their ruling characteristic is a wise and 
practical acquaintance with the true conditions of human life. 
Daniel Fraser, one of the oldest of the brethren, used con- 
tinually to say : — 

"The two bases of morality are the cultivation of the soil 
and hygiene." 



218 OUTRE-MER 

Regular habits, a scientifically arranged diet, well-drained 
houses, well-ventilated rooms, and a carefully supervised tem- 
perature, — to these minute details their ethic condescends, 
and to still more humble ones. "At Mount Lebanon," says 
Professor Ely, " I learned to close a door so softly that no one 
could hear the slightest sound. ' That is a lesson in Shaker- 
ism, ' Daniel Fraser said to me; 'it is Shakerism reduced to 
the finest point.' " 

Here you recognize, under an artless form provocative of 
smiles, a scrupulosity, a watchfulness over self, which is itself 
only one instance of their acute sense of responsibility. You 
find in it also the same innocent realism of conventual life by 
which monks so quickly became rich from the smallest be- 
ginnings. Everything holds together in such communities, 
and such a degree of discipline can hardly exist without a 
superior degree of the virtues of order and economy. Is not 
this pretty far removed from the sphere in which modern 
revolutions have broken forth ? 

But the social experiments of the Perfectionists and the 
Shakers were entirely isolated and arbitrary. The character- 
istics of the popular soul in the United States are more clearly 
marked in the development of the simple labor associations. 
For these associations have really been the work of the laboring 
men, a sort of stock of civic implements made by themselves 
for their own interest and according to their profound needs. 

Here the two currents are the more clearly visible, because 
the second appeared at a considerable time after the first. 
Until after the War of Secession, the societies founded by 
workingmen, almost without exception, manifested the dis- 
tinctive features of the Anglo-Saxon race, in its American 
variety. First, there were the trades-unions, entirely pro- 
fessional and local, like those of England; for instance, the 
typographical union of New York and that of house carpenters 
in Boston, founded in 1812, 



THE LOWER ORDERS 219 

The programme of the latter society falls into the line of 
those minds of which Robinson will ever be the ideal type, 
perfectly indifferent to vast general theories, but positive, 
moral, with a very individual power of initiative in the ser- 
vice of their own interests, and with ardent Christian convic- 
tions. The charter of the carpenters shows that they combined 
with intent themselves "to govern their own affairs, to ad- 
minister their own funds, to study the inventions peculiar to 
their art, to assist the unemployed by loans of money, to sup- 
port the sick and their families," 

If one had talked with these fine fellows of a universal 
reform, if one had advocated a forcible reconstruction of the 
relations of employers and employed, a crusade of labor against 
capital, they certainly would not have understood the meaning 
of such dangerous words. They desired, as laborers, to im- 
prove their condition as laborers, because, in fact, that is the 
only practical and moral way, at once conformed to the precept 
to render to Csesar the things that are Caesar's, and at the 
same time truly useful, with an immediate certain utility. As 
to that, is not this the complete statement of the social prob- 
lem : to improve the rich man as a rich man, the noble as a 
noble, the commoner as a commoner, the workingman as a 
workingman? 

This spirit of Christian realism and patient progress con- 
tinued to inspire the larger unions, which, after 1825, bound 
together the men of the same trade in different cities, or the 
men of different trades in the same city. In 1833, Ely Morse, 
the president of the general trades-unions of the city of New 
York, in a remarkable address, which was the first utterance 
of American socialism, spoke only of "elevating the intellect- 
ual and moral condition of the workers, diminishing the line 
of demarcation between workman and employer, and better 
administering the pecuniary interests of the poor." 

Still this general trades-union society already foresaw the 



220 OUTRE-MER 

danger of violent means, for one of the articles of the agree- 
ment forbade that "any trade section should enter upon a 
strike for higher wages until the motives of such strike have 
been investigated by the central council." Such, indeed, was 
the nationalism of American workmen at that period, that 
one of their chiefs, Stephen Simpson of Philadelphia, in a 
manual which at once became very popular, condemned with 
a thoroughly puritan indignation European ideas and litera- 
ture as the source of all the errors of the United States. An- 
other prominent labor leader in the same way announced the 
necessity of "checking foreign encroachments, and hindering 
their pernicious influence upon the moral and political health 
of the country." 

In fact, the associations, which rapidly increased until i860, 
were almost all thoroughly, zealously patriotic. They were 
such not only in their names but in their claims, which never 
looked to be anything like an overturning of existing condi- 
tions. A more humane limitation of the hours of labor, a 
more generous distribution of aid, greater facilities for edu- 
cation, a more equitable scale of wages, — ideas as moderate 
and reasonable as these continually appear in their constitu- 
tions. 

To realize these, the workmen always relied upon the most 
practical means and those most in conformity with the true 
Anglo-Saxon spirit of free action and liberty; they asked for 
individual subscriptions, they advocated clever electoral 
methods, they founded newspapers, they studied technical 
questions. Thus the American hatters' association, founded 
in 1854, is chiefly interested in the question of apprenticeship. 
It undertook to limit their number, in order at the same time 
to limit the number of workmen among whom work must be 
divided. 

Following the various lines of their effort and their propa- 
ganda, one feels inspired with profound respect for so much 



THE LOWER ORDERS 221 

conscience in the search for the better, for so manly an accep- 
tation of their lot, for such constant and clear-sighted energy. 
One sees how much the Yankee of good stock was worth, is 
still worth, — he upon whom the strong tradition of the early 
New England colonists is imprinted; and one becomes clearly 
aware of the sudden astounding deviation of this movement 
by the second current, that which has made possible such 
speeches as those of Mr. Debs at Chicago, denouncing one of 
the great companies of the country, as a barbarian chief might 
denounce a city to be sacked : " We will side-track Pullman 
and his cars together," and accusing the government of military 
despotism for a mere calling out of the police ! 

Immediately after the War of Secession foreign influence 
began to make itself felt, and at the same time immigration 
began to increase from year to year. Even during the war, all 
Americans by birth or affection being in the army, foreign labor 
began to replace native labor. This substitution went on during 
the period that followed, which was marked by an enormous 
revival of industry. More and more hands were needed, and, 
as the means of transportation were becoming more and more 
easy, immigrants came in flocks. The Atlantic became the great 
conduit through which flowed all the malcontents of old Europe, 
especially of Germany. 

The latter country, the true fatherland of revolutionary social- 
ism, had already, after 1848, sent to America the first agitators 
who had sowed upon this soil of realistic individualism the seeds 
of an absurd overturning and a bloody Utopia. They were not 
destined to germinate until twenty years later. A tailor of 
Magdeburg, Wilhelm Weiteling, imprisoned in his own country 
for carrying on a revolutionary propaganda, came to New York. 
Aided by Henry Koch, another German, he immediately 
founded a German revolutionary society, the Arbeiterbund. 
A third German, Weidemeyer, a friend of Karl Marx, was not 
long in joining them. These three men may be considered as 



222 OUTRE-MER 

very remarkable specimens of a type now common in the 
United States, the cosmopolitan agitator, who imports into a 
country of which he knows nothing revolutionary theories 
which he has constructed with reference to the abuses of 
another. 

Both the convictions and the characters of all three were 
entirely matured when they arrived. Weiteling was forty years 
old, Henry Koch thirty-two. Weidemeyer had passed his whole 
youth in conspiring in his native land. None of their ideas 
were American, and none of the manifestations which they 
stirred up, without immediate result however, were American. 
Thus it was that a club of communists being founded in New 
York, under their direction, in 1857, they decided to celebrate 
the next year — what anniversary? That of the insurrection 
of June in Paris ! Several thousand men and women took 
part in it ; they belonged to all countries except America. 

This society, this festival, and this club were the prologue 
of the great drama of internationalism which is being played 
to-day from Boston to San Francisco. The very word inter- 
national had hardly been pronounced then. Now, and espe- 
cially since in 1872 the grand council of the International 
Association of VVorkingmen was transferred to New York, it 
may be found in hundreds of programmes and in thousands of 
articles pubhshed by newspapers which are printed in several 
languages. 

Even when the word is not there, the international spirit may 
be recognized by the essential alteration of the principles on 
which the truly American societies rested. In the first place, 
there are no longer any religious declarations. Whether the 
leagues bear the name Socialistic Labor Party, or International 
Workingmen's Associations, whether they are called Inter- 
national Working People's Association, or Central Labor Union, 
the S. L. P., like the I. W. A., or the I. W. P. A., and the 
C. L. U., are all alike in the absence of Christian ideas. In 



THE LOWER ORDERS 223 

the chief, the arrogance of materiahsm has taken the place of 
the half-mystical solemnity of the workingmen still imbued 
with the spirit of the " Pilgrim Fathers." " The Church," they 
say roughly, " seeks ultimately to make complete idiots of the 
mass, and to make them forego an earthly paradise by promis- 
ing a fictitious heaven." 

With Christianity, humility of heart has taken its leave, and 
with it, the noble submission to the fundamental laws of human 
life, formulated once for all in the Decalogue. No doubt, 
certain orators still repudiate violence in the means, though 
holding up revolution as aim. It is enough, however, to look 
at their practice to understand that the foundation of every 
man's thought conforms to the terrible expression of the Pitts- 
burg manifesto, " Destruction of the existing class law, by all 
means : that is, by energetic, relentless, revolutionary, and 
international action." 

From this point there is to be no more slow and wise solu- 
tions, no more of that intelligent and purposed positivism which 
is the very essence of the American soul. From any traditional 
point of view we have had the last of these calls to the grand 
War of Independence which brought together both poor and 
rich in a common pride of belonging to the freest of peoples. 
The spoiled children of the party expressed the sentiment 
which the others scarcely concealed, when, unfurhng the black 
flag at Chicago in 1884, they cried : — 

*•' This is the first time that this emblem of hunger and 
despair has appeared upon American ground. It proves 
that this people has come to the same conditions as other 
peoples." 

The Freiheit, one of their organs, put into brusque words 
what the Internationalists think of America : " Judge Lynch is 
still the best and least costly tribunal in this country." 

In all these tendencies you recognize the obscene and vio- 
lent socialism of Germany, from which issued Russian nihilism 



224 OUTRE-MER 

and French anarchism. This it is that three million Germans 
have brought with them within thirty years ; this is the spirit 
that effervesces in monstrous strikes like that of Chicago. This 
is what flowed like a destroying metal into the moulds of the 
associations so solidly and practically formed by the first Trade- 
Unionists. Thanks to German socialism, these associations 
are bloated and deformed. Veritable armies, whose soldiers 
do not know one another, have been organized under the pre- 
text of labor federations. The generals who manoeuvre them 
are foreigners or the sons of foreigners, perfectly indifferent to 
the happy future of the country whose hospitality they have 
received. Even societies like the Knights of Labor, which 
keep the grand tradition of Christian ideahsm, have been urged 
by their new chiefs in the direction of international revolu- 
tion, and Mr. Debs could exclaim a few months ago, with a 
pride which was at least American in its conception of the 
" record " : — 

" We are going to have the greatest railroad strike that the 
world has ever seen." 

This perverse ranter had a hundred and twenty thousand 
men behind him. 

Sometimes it happens that a newspaper artist sums up 
in the happy hit of a caricature a whole political or social 
situation. Thus a picture in Fun, toward the end of the 
Chicago strike, brought together in three figures and a legend 
the entire significance of the strike and all its lessons. The 
traditional Jonathan is standing beside a rocking-chair, his 
hand in his pockets, a dead cigar in the corner of his beard- 
less mouth. He has even forgotten to finish his glass of whis- 
key and soda which he has set down upon the counter. His 
thin melancholy face with its high cheek bones, lengthened by 
the legendary goatee, is profoundly meditative. On his waist- 
coat are the thirteen stars representing the thirteen original 
States, which are also seen on his silver coins. Facing him, 



THE LOWER ORDERS 225 

a colossal policeman has by the collar a personage who might 
be a Russian peasant or a Bavarian workman, in a flannel 
shirt, trowsers tucked into his boots, and a soft felt hat : " I 
was obliged to arrest you, Debs. It was not a strike ; it was a 
revolution." 

Jonathan utters this remark with the serious phlegm of one 
who understands and wills. What does he understand but that 
the newcomers are about to carry on in his country a work 
irreparably hostile to all his ideas, his conscience, and his past. 
, What he wills, is to hinder at all costs, were he to die in the 
attempt, such a disintegration of his country. The formida- 
ble movement at Chicago may have been so far good. The 
problem had been stated with such tragic clearness that it was 
necessary indeed to affront it ; and it is to the honor of Mr. 
Cleveland that he acted with regard to this Western affair, in 
proportion to its importance, as Mr. Lincoln firmly acted with 
the South. 

This first episode is probably only a prologue. Looking 
upon the map of the United States, and reflecting that between 
Chicago and the Pacific all the cities of this immense country 
are peopled with these newcomers, one sees the menacing 
possibility of a scission between the two parts of the vast con- 
tinent which will have nothing in common, neither memories 
nor ideas, nor aspirations, nor even a language. Again the 
image of Lincoln arises, with face like that of Jonathan in the 
caricature, and you think that if he were to return to that 
Chicago whence he went forth, and which has become so 
terribly Germanized since his death, he also would utter the 
word of conflict : — 

"Obliged to arrest you." 

Just as the question of slavery was only a battle-field for the 

clashing of two contradictory civilizations, of the South and 

of the North, it sometimes appears as if, at the present time, 

the East and the West were also about to seek a field in which 

Q 



226 OUTRE-MER 

to measure their strength, or, rather, the America of Americans 
and the America of foreigners. The Silver Bill was one of 
these fields. The Chicago strike was another. • The social 
question is a permanent one, upon which, perhaps, the deci- 
sive battle will be fought. The grand formulae of social re- 
forms have no more meaning nor any more sincere adherents 
in the United States than in France. The infinite complexity 
of a civilization is not modified at the bidding of even the 
most justified of our revolts, or the most intelligent of our 
theories. Except a few insane people, everybody in his inner 
heart admits this too evident truth, though almost every one 
says the contrary. 

Under these problems, which every one knows are insoluble, 
throb other forces, real and not to be resolved. The day when 
excessive immigration shall have truly created two Americas 
in America, the conflict between these two worlds will be as 
inevitable as that between England and Ireland, between Ger- 
many and France, between China and Japan. Not against his 
employer will the American workman of New York and Phila- 
delphia be led to make war, his employer and he will end by 
acting together against the foreign workman. 

To sum up, in this vast democracy a very peculiar form of 
civilization has been elaborated, Anglo-Saxon in its origin. 
Another is in process of elaboration, through cosmopolitan 
associations, with nothing in common with the former. If the 
second form comes, by way of too widespread strikes and too 
violent illegalities, to a weakness of the whole national life, 
a civil war will break out. 

Pessimists insist that such war is very near. Optimists 
point out that immigration, on the one hand, appears to have 
diminished; on the other, that assimilation, though become 
more slow and very difficult, yet goes on in an irresistible 
way, and that foreigners are becoming fewer and a little 
more Americanized every year, almost every day. They dem- 



THE LOWER ORDERS 227 

onstrate that Christianity continues to dispute possession 
of the revolutionary masses with materialism, and that the 
Protestant pastors rival our Catholic bishops in zeal when 
it comes to the people. Was it not a Reform minister who 
uttered this fine exclamation, which was at first attributed to 
the generous heart of Monsignor Ireland : — 

"Theologians say that the problem is to bring the masses 
into the Church. As for me, I affirm that the problem is to 
bring the Church to the masses. The Church is the leaven. 
The masses are the dough which it will leaven." 

Optimists add that in America all the capitalists are still 
men thoroughly penetrated with the primitive energy, and 
that, in case of need, they will know how to defend their own 
interest, with a personal vigor very different from the spiritual 
weakness of the nobles of 1789 or the indolent cowardice of 
the small European landowners in 1894. As to the psychol- 
ogy which perceives in American society an experience with- 
out analogue, the years to come will be more interesting here 
than anywhere else, because, after having established the truth 
of all the novelties of this New World, we remain astonished 
on perceiving that fundamentally it is going, under particular 
forms, through the same crises as the ancient world endured. 
If the social problem in the United States was only a question 
of nationalities, is the political problem of Europe, armed to 
the death, to end in anything else ? So true it is that thoughts 
and constitutions, doctrines and systems, are only appear- 
ances, under which are hidden a number of facts, always the 
same since the world was made, always real and indestructi- 
ble, like duration and extent, first and last; conditions of our 
whole being and activity, our triumphs and disasters. And 
perhaps among the facts which are most indestructible, most 
real, the most essential is that of Race. 



228 OUTRE-MER 

11. Farmers and Cowboys 

To estimate more accurately the revolutionary strength of 
international socialism in the United States, we must know 
which side the immense agricultural population of the West 
would take, in case of a decisive conflict — the farmers who 
produce the wheat by which all America and all Europe is 
fed, the drovers who feed the gigantic packing-houses of 
Chicago with such a continual procession of cattle. 

Here the foreign element is indeed found, but entirely sur- 
rounded, diluted, corrected by the national element. When 
an Eastern man goes West, it is seldom with the intention of 
becoming a workingman. He prefers to take the chances of 
a more speedy fortune with the independence which inheres 
in the cultivation of such fertile land, such productive horse 
raising,^ or in prospecting for gold. He becomes farmer, 
cowboy, or miner. Thus is explained that abandonment of 
the rural homes of New England, of which I have already 
spoken. But if it is difficult to divine the real thought of the 
workingman, even when we know the plan of the associations 
to which he belongs, the newspapers he reads, the speeches 
he makes and listens to, the leaders whose influence he is 
under, how much more difficult is it to fathom the mind of 
the gold-digger in his placer, the horseman in his tent, above 
all, of the farmer in his circumscribed life, his long medita- 
tions, and the almost vegetative darkness of his own conscious- 
ness? 

We should, at all costs, understand this last, for he forms 
the very basis of this immense population. But by what proc- 
esses shall we attain to a knowedge of him? We know that 
his lot is hard, worse than that, exhausting and murderous. 
Travellers who have studied the laborer of Kansas, Missouri, 

1 The average of births, which is not more than 50 per cent in a state 
of civilization, reaches 70, 80, and 90 per cent in the prairie. 



THE LOWER ORDERS 229 

Iowa, in his log-house, agree in describing him as put to the 
severest strain of all the much-tried inhabitants of the New 
World. The log-house, the little house of ill-squared trunks, 
is built in a corner of the prairie, his vast domain, burned by 
a torrid sun in summer and buried in snow in winter. The 
principal ornament of the room is an engraving of the death 
of Lincoln, — the last episode of a life begun like this, and 
which went, according to the popular play upon words, " from 
the log-house to the White House," from a hut like this to the 
little white palace in Washington, by way of how many severe 
efforts, continued, struggles, hardships continually renewed ! 

The farmer, for his part, nourishes no such ambition, not 
even for his sons. He wants to live and to have his farm pay. 
He wears himself out in this struggle, and his wife dies of it. 
The courageous creature has long kept to herself the palpita- 
tions that rent her heart whenever she climbed to the garret 
in the cold mornings, the cracking of her joints when she 
lifted any burden, the shivering fevers of her sleepless nights.^ 
The doctor lives several miles away, and each visit costs from 
five to ten dollars. She goes on trying the patent medicines 
advertised in her newspaper, following the advice of the neigh- 
bors, above all, hiding her sufferings from her husband, till 
she drops at last, and goes away, leaving him alone with his 
children on the little demesne covered with mortgages. 

And yet these farmers, who labor under such cruel condi- 
tions, appear, when they have occasion to bring forward their 
private opinions, to be as wise and as respectful of the rights 
of others as'the strikers of Illinois and California are unreason- 
ing and fierce. The widespread association by which they 
guard their common interests, "the Grange," has always kept 
itself sedulously outside of political movements. It assumes, 
as its name indicates, to be at the service not only of agricul- 

1 Cf. in Scribner''s Magazine for March, 1894, a striking picture of such 
an existence, "The Farmer in the North." 



230 OUTRE-MER 

tural laborers but of the entire agricultural class, — "the 
Grange, or the patrons of husbandry." To say all in one 
word, its merits are such that in the book by- Aveling, already 
cited, appear the following significant words : — 

" It may in time become leavened with the leaven of the 
general working-class movement, but as it is at present con- 
stituted the Grange is more likely to be a hindrance to that 
general movement than a help." 

What shall we conclude, if not that once again the land 
has done its moralizing work? It has given man the great, 
the unique virtue, in teaching him to accept himself, as he 
accepts the order of the months, the slow growth of the har- 
vests, the rain, the snow, the wind, the sun, all the apparent 
and necessary wrongs of the seasons. 

One characteristic of these Western farmers may be dis- 
cerned at the first approach; it is a thirst, a hunger, almost a 
fever of desire, to know, an intense, even violent, passion for 
the things of the mind, which explains how so many remarka- 
ble men in the United States have been farmers' sons. This 
shade of character is so completely unexpected in these rough 
men that at first one does not believe it when the Americans 
tell you of it, some of them in complaint, some in admira- 
tion. The former deplore the excessive seriousness of the 
national character, which ends they say in a constant excess 
of work, an absolute incapacity to enjoy anything, "to enjoy 
himself," as they say. The others see in it the presage of that 
sovereignty in the civilized world which is the secret dream 
of all full-blooded Yankees. 

Whatever conclusion may be drawn from it, the fact re- 
mains. I have assured myself of it, not once but twenty 
times, thirty times, only by studying the crowd which thronged 
around the Exposition buildings in Chicago — now burned, 
because to take them down would have been too slow a proc- 
ess. When I visited them they were in the splendor of their 



THE LOWER ORDERS 231 

whiteness and their fleeting glory. With their capitals copied 
from Rome and Athens, their slender domes, the chaotic 
medley of their composite architecture, they gave the idea of 
a dream city, a city of vision suddenly appearing on the bor- 
ders of Lake Michigan vast as a sea, whose bright green 
waters dashed against the columns of a gigantic portico. Yes, 
it was truly a glorious scene in the fine days of early autumn, 
raised up as by a wish, for the pleasure of this great nation of 
toilers, called together there as to a meeting of joy and repose. 

But, no. The multitude scattered along these walks and over 
these lawns was more than all striking to a Parisian by the total 
absence of both joy and repose. These people were neither 
heedless nor lively. They went about examining the interior 
and the exterior of the Exposition with a sort of blank avidity, 
as if they were walking in the midst of a colossal lesson in 
things. 

"I don't care about seeing folks. I kin see folks to home. 
I came to see what's made in the world." ^ 

These words, overheard and reported by one of the chroni- 
clers of this singular festival, were mentally uttered by all the 
visitors. They were, for the most part, just these farmers, 
come from the four quarters of the immense plain that stretches 
from Montana to Kentucky and from Arizona to Wisconsin. 
You could see them about two o'clock sitting on the ground, 
with their families, around their State building, leisurely eat- 
ing the provision of cold food which they had brought in a 
pasteboard box. The coarse cloth of their garments, their 
sunburnt faces, even their way of eating, without a table, and 
with the ease of people accustomed to take their food in the 
open air, — everything about them betrayed the fixed habits 
of rural life. Their lunch finished, they began again their 
indefinite, indefatigable walk, not of pleasure but of instruc- 

^ Scribner^s Magazine, March, 1894. 



232 OUTRE-MER 

tion, application. How many of these rustic visitors have I 
followed, as they went from the Hall of Mines to that of Elec- 
tricity, or from the Transportation Building to the Woman's 
Building, attentive, patient, obscurely reflective, and, it 
seemed to me, even less interested in the machines, in the 
prodigality of positive and material invention, than in the 
exhibits that were more scientific, more useless, nearer to 
the wide field of abstract speculation. 

As I write these words, I see three of these personages — a 
father and his two sons — motionless in a corner of the an- 
thropological exhibit. They were looking at the colossal 
mammoth, the enormous hairy elephant of before the deluge, 
copied from that of St. Petersburg. All around them were 
gathered the forms of animals and men that formerly inhabited 
America, — races extinct or dying out, elk and caribous, 
bisons and grizzly bears, Sioux and Apaches in their encamp- 
ments, cliff-dwellers, those Troglodytes of the Grand Cafion 
of the Colorado. 

The farmer and his two sons took no notice of these things, 
absorbed as they were by the colossus, the history of which 
one of the sons was telling to his father. The latter listened 
to the seventeen-year-old boy without taking his eyes from the 
formidable beast, the silent giant, with his long recurv^ed 
tusks. Did he feel the beauty of this ancient king of crea- 
tion, so tall, so slight, so simple, nature's first success, very 
evidently superior to the shapeless masses of the monsters, his 
contemporaries, the plesiosaurus, the ichthyosaurus, the mega- 
therion? What was this witness of distant ages, this traveller 
in the forests of giant ferns, saying to the thoughtful colonist? 
The boy ceased to speak ; the three men stood there without 
exchanging a word. The grave countenance of the ignorant 
father, the almost equally grave faces of the two better in- 
formed boys, were bent forward with an expression of insa- 
tiable curiosity. Did they, in their rudimentary condition, 



THE LOWER ORDERS 233 

feel that amazement, in view of the enigma of the world, 
which is not so foreign to primitive minds as we in our pride 
imagine, since it is these minds that have created the myths, 
the poetry of legend, and, to say all in one word, the re- 
ligions? 

Did they ask themselves the reason of the rhythm of crea- 
tion and destruction, which will carry us away in our turn, 
after having carried away innumerable species? Why that 
world before our own, the attempts and new attempts of 
Nature, trying her powers, like a never-satisfied artist, in these 
new beginnings, in which the indefinite power to produce for- 
ever alternates with the impossibility of preserving? Is man 
himself the limit of this evolution? His roots are so deeply 
fixed in it, he is so distinct from it by the higher parts of his 
being ! Thoughts, words, moral problems, what an abyss 
divides these things from those ! What a miracle is the mere 
astonishment of the thought in face of the miracle of destiny? 
How new a thing, in this universe of blind instincts and un- 
conscious needs! This gigantic elephant, but now the dispos- 
sessed sovereign of our planet, did he ever look at another 
creature with the thoughtful gaze with which this farmer and 
his sons have enfolded him? 

They begin at last to talk, without taking their eyes from the 
admired animal, and I could hear in passing that they were 
speaking of the Bible, pronouncing the name of Noah. Then 
the squatter of to-day, like the men of a hundred years ago, in 
burying himself in the prairie, carries with him the old book, so 
dear to the Puritans, to be the companion of his solitude, his 
work, and his thought. 

It was written that I should see again the serious faces of the 
father and his two sons, and that the same day I should collect 
some very unexpected and still more significant information about 
Western life. These vast fairs, which go by the pompous titles 



234 OUTRE-MER 

of Universal Exhibitions, have at least this advantage, that they 
bring about meetings elsewhere impossible, yet natural in this 
Babel of people from all parts. I shall, therefore, simply nar- 
rate both of these meetings, which, I may add, were purely 
accidental. I do this with all the more pleasure, because it 
gives me the opportunity to sketch, as if on the margin of this 
travelling-journal, a rough draught of the most singular spectacle 
which I have seen in America ; a session of the Parliament of 
Religions, where I again met my three friends. 

This Parliament was held in one of the halls of the Art Insti- 
tute which stands, as it is quite in keeping that the Chicago 
Museum should do, close by a railway station and a steamboat 
landing. I went there one morning, deeply moved with the 
expectation of a profound, religious impression. I received my 
impression indeed, but entirely through the public ; the multi- 
tude of humble folk, evidently working people, who crowded 
the benches and chairs of the vast semicircle. With what 
touching attention they listened, ready to receive the good word 
— any good word. And with what surprise I recognized, seated 
about ten chairs from me, the three persons who had so much 
interested me by their way of contemplating the antediluvian 
monster ! I felt a certain vanity of the astute observer, in per- 
ceiving that I had not erred in attributing to these people a 
regard for religious things. Their rugged faces wore the same 
absorbed expression as before. Out of doors locomotive bells 
were tinkling, trains puffing, steamboats whistling. Not one of 
the fifteen hundred auditors gathered in this hall remarked the 
strangeness of such noises at the door of this palace, just as no 
one appeared to observe the astounding contrast which existed 
between the true, simple, devout fervor of the audience, and the 
sort of sacred parade that was going on upon the platform in 
the rear, opposite a gigantic photographic apparatus set up in 
the opposite side of the hall. 

In fact, in spite of my good will, the feeling that, it was all a 



THE LOWER ORDERS 235 

parade forced itself upon me whenever I turned my eyes from 
the crowd to the speakers' stage. There were thirty persons 
sitting there that morning, — one of the last of the session: 
first a Japanese in a coat of embossed silk, a dog-like face with 
a pair of glasses across the flat nose and black moustaches 
against a shining yellow skin. He was busily cutting the pages 
of a pamphlet, without listening to what was going on, while 
at his side an Indian robed in white, with very gentle, very 
brown eyes in a face so swarthy that it looked burned, was 
vaguely smiling in the visions of a half-sleep. A Chinese in a 
blue robe, his body encased in a violet silk vest, and a black 
cap with a red button on his head, was scanning the audience ; 
his wizened little face was pale and thin, with a not too straight 
nose. A Greek archbishop sat superb, with squared shoulders, 
his long brown beard spread out over his gray almost yellowish 
robe. Over it a black toga was draped, and the gold of the 
chain from which hung his cross gleamed between the two stuffs. 
He held a long, silver-headed cane in his hand, and his inexpres- 
sive eyes shone with the brightness of a magician, set as they 
were in a large face of a thick warm pallor and surmounted by 
the high cap of a professor. 

One of his priests sat beside him, a pappas, with long, ill- 
kept hair, untrimmed beard, and delicate, sensual, ironical face. 
Then came another Indian, twenty years old, perhaps, self- 
sufficient in his ardent youth ; his dress intensely red, and his 
turban intensely yellow. Around these Orientals were grouped 
English pastors, rosy and shaven ; German professors, heavy- 
bearded and sharp-eyed under their spectacles. A Frenchman 
of delicate profile, but thin and worn, sat cross-legged, show- 
ing feet elegantly shod in patent leather, with white jean gaiters. 
A little in the background were two women : one, gray-haired 
and fifty, with the abstracted and modest air of a poor school 
teacher ; the other, young and beautiful, very dark, with cheeks 
brown under their paint, her shoulders covered by a silk shawl 



236 OUTRE-MER 

of mingled brilliant colors. Large gold cirplets jingled on her 
wrists. And to make this composite exhibition as vulgar as it 
was foreign, a fat, uncleanly man of forty-five, in the front row, 
was fumbling at his nose with his fingers ; while a chairman, with 
the voice of a showman, rose between two organ measures, to 
introduce the speakers, with all the graces of an impresario. 

I was wrong in looking thus minutely into the accidents of 
this realization of a great idea, and my Western farmers were 
right, like the other auditors, in seeing that idea beyond and 
through these accidents. There was a moment when the three 
heads were bent forward with more profound attention. A 
speaker had risen, a celebrated minister of the Anglican Church. 
He was a small man of about fifty, very thin and ruddy. The 
black of his straight-cut coat and the white of his all-round 
collar, without cravat, made his red face seem redder. He 
began in a low voice, hardly audible. With a monotonous, 
almost automatic, gesture, he indefatigably raised and lowered 
his arm. By degrees, as he spoke, he warmed up, his body 
straightened out, his foot beat the floor, his color grew more 
purple, his voice deepened. For me, too, the absurdities of 
the platform vanished. Here was that frenzy of religious 
eloquence and passion which made Protestantism and its innu- 
merable sects. When the words " Church of England " oc- 
curred in his discourse, the orator's whole being trembled 
with profound inspiration. You could hear it, could see it 
thrill to the tips of his toes, as he raised himself upon them 
in his earnestness. 

" No ! " he once exclaimed; " it was not the English people 
who made the Church, it was the Church of England that 
made the English nation ! " 

The.se words, uttered with furious emphasis, no doubt met 
in his hearers a previously formed idea, a conviction that 
national life must find its strength in religious life, for it 
evoked a tempest of applause. I turned toward the father and 






THE LOWER ORDERS 237 

his two sons; they were clapping their hands, enormous hands, 
that two hundred years ago would no doubt have applauded 
the Lord Protector, and thirty years ago Lincoln, when he 
uttered to the people the strange words announcing that the 
war would last 

"Until every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid 
for by another drawn by the sword." 

These men, with their intense faces, have without doubt 
drawn their tragic vision of divine justice directly from the 
Bible. It alone explains their almost anxiously serious re- 
sponse the other day to the reminder of the deluge, and to- 
day to the representatives of their faith. If there are many 
like them, the socialistic atheists may conquer the villages, 
but they will never get any hold upon the fields of the West. 

My curiosity with regard to these three men was so lively 
that I believe I should have followed and tried to speak with 
them if I had not myself been seized by the arm at the moment 
the audience rose at the sound of the organ. I turned, and 
found myself face to face with a celebrated Parisian physician, 
whom, if his name had been spoken, I should have fancied 
anyAvhere rather than at Chicago, — in his magnificent apart- 
ment in the Boulevard Haussman, in the clinic of the Lari- 
boisiere hospital, in his laboratory-at the medical school. He 
had made the most of an official pretext of a hygienic congress 
to cross the Atlantic and see American civilization with his 
own eyes, object, as it had been, of so many capricious judg- 
ments. In two words he had explained his journey to me, 
and presented to me a great fellow of perhaps thirty-five, also 
a Frenchman, who accompanied him, and whom by his thin, 
clean-shaven face, his somewhat stiff attire, and the decision 
of his glance, I took for a civil officer. 

I had not taken five hundred steps with my two compatriots 
before I found myself interested in this young man to such 
an extent that I no longer regretted the mischance which had 



238 OUTRE-MER 

made me lose sight of my friends of the anthropological ex- 
hibit and the Parliament of Religions. I learned from the 
doctor that the man before me was one of the most daring 
adventurers of the West, such as for several weeks I have much 
desired to see. M. Barrin-Cond^ — I will designate him by 
this name — had in fact left France fourteen years before, to 
start a ranch in the Rocky Mountains, and had lived there 
eight consecutive years. The accident of a short excursion 
having led him to Toronto, Canada, in the course of his 
exile, he there met a young girl with whom he fell in love. 
To marry her he had changed his mode of life, sold out his 
ranch in North Dakota, and taken root in the city of his 
fiancee, now his wife. He had founded a steamboat company, 
which he administered with the same superior good sense and 
energy as formerly his ranch; it had now monopolized the 
major part of the traffic of the great lake. 

It is rare, indeed, and most pleasant, to meet in a foreign 
land a Frenchman in whom survives a spirit of enterprise 
equal to that of the Anglo-Saxons, one so loves to convince 
oneself by his presence that our race has kept the same qual- 
ities of enterprise that once made it the great conquering 
power; to talk over the country with a man who himself has 
seen its lower side is deeply- interesting ! In short, I did not 
leave the doctor and his companion the whole day long. I 
was never weary of asking the latter about his life at Lance- 
Head, — so his breeding-farm was called, from the sign with 
which his horses were marked, — about the folk among whom 
he lived, their manners, their ideas, and about his own ideas. 
He answered me quietly, simply, with that accuracy of speech 
that belongs to the man of action. There was in him some- 
thing of the wild dignity that Cooper gave his " Leatherstock- 
ing." But it was a Leatherstocking who had kept up with our 
literature, having been careful, through all his rough life, not 
to fall behind in intelligence. 



THE LOWER ORDERS 239 

1 remember that we finished this day — which on my part 
had been one long interrogation, and on his a long response — 
by an hour in an orchestra chair of one of the great Chicago 
theatres. As if to make the occupations of this evening a 
perfect contrast to those of the morning, chance would have 
it that we saw Tarfufe given by Coquelin and his troupe. I 
had been proud of my country while talking with M. Barrin- 
Conde, and I was again proud on seeing this admirable piece 
played as it was, even before a half-filled hall. And what 
spectators'. Almost all followed the copy in a translation, 
and we could hear the leaves of the pamphlet all turned over 
at one time. But what mattered that to Coquelin 1 The great 
artist seemed not even to know that there was a public. He 
evidently played for himself, with the conscientiousness and 
the care for his art which he would have displayed on the 
stage of the Rue de Richelieu at his first performance. He 
was still studying it, still studying himself, ever applying him- 
self to reveal more clearly the moral anatomy of his character. 
-And in Chicago, where all extravagances, all improvisations 
prevail, Tariufe appeared finer than ever by its strong and 
true simplicity, by the genius for moderation and delicacy, 
which always kept itself at the level of a man, if one may 
say so, neither above nor below, neither on this side nor 
on that. There is something of Philippe de Champaigne 
in Moliere, something of the vigorous but sober, ardent but 
judicious painter in whose portraits you ever find something 
to admire more deeply, and which never leave you anything 
to take back on reflection. Although the doctor and I 
had seen this piece thirtj' times, and had seen Coquelin in 
this part at least ten times, we were as much taken by the 
dialogue and the play as at the first time. As for the former 
"cowboy" of Lance-Head, as he called himself, he entirely 
ceased to speak during the whole play, between the acts in- 
cluded. 



240 OUTRE-MER 

"You do not know," he said, as we went out and walked 
along toward Michigan Avenue, " no, you do not know how 
much, how painfully, those who live as I have lived feel the 
want of the intellectual stimulus of the theatre, and how we 
value an evening like this. See here," he added, turning to 
me, "you were laughingly asking me, after dinner this even- 
ing, if I had not some time raided a train in the West, and 
I did not answer you. The fact is, my friends arid I did at- 
tempt nothing less one day, or, rather, one night, than to carry 
off from one of the great transcontinental express trains — 
guess whom? Sarah Bernhardt herself! She never knew 
anything about it, however." 

" And how many may you have been for such an expedi- 
tion? " I asked. 

"Oh, very few; but you need not think it is hard to stop 
one of these important trains. When we were planning this 
fine scheme, we tested it, — rehearsed it, — forgive the word, 
since we are speaking of an actress. We learned that Sarah 
Bernhardt was to pass through Green River, Wyoming, a week 
later. We wanted to know if it would be possible to stop a 
train long enough to carry out our project. There were eleven 
of us knights of the ' round up ' as they say out there, all well 
mounted, all with that sort of ardor for danger which in youth 
so easily leads to a misuse of strength. We posted ourselves, 
in broad daylight, at a place where the line made such sharp 
curves that the express was obliged to slow up. It appeared 
in sight. One of us galloped alongside of the locomotive, 
guiding his pony with his knees, covering the engineer with 
his rifle. I did the same on the other side. The engineer 
stopped his train. Our comrades dismounted and went 
through the train, with revolvers cocked, crying ' Hands up ! ' 
We risked a terrible scrimmage if there had been a man there 
plucky enough to draw his weapon. Luckily there was not. 
While the terrified travellers were hurriedly opening their 



THE LOWER ORDERS • 241 

valises to buy their liberty, the pretended robbers had already 
remounted, and away we went, firing our pieces into the air." 

"How about the police?" I asked. 

"They were represented," replied M. Barrin-Cond6, "by 
a sheriff who lived eighty miles off, and who, I think, is still 
investigating the matter. And besides, — for everything in the 
West has its grotesque side, and it all seems natural enough 
when one is carried along by this life, — we were all masked, 
or at least our faces were muffled in handkerchiefs. Though 
the experiment was successful, we perceived one danger. 
We wanted to play a joke, which I leave it to you to qualify, 
but we did not wish to run the risk of killing or being killed. 
We decided, therefore, to carry off Sarah Bernhardt from the 
station itself. Her train was due at Green River at eleven 
fifty-two. We were to rush into her car, carry her out by 
main force, put her in a buggy, and gallop off at full speed. 
Some of the party were to protect our retreat with their revol- 
vers. One of us, a certain Sarlat, who is now a captain of 
infantry in Africa, was charged to board the train at the pre- 
ceding station. It was understood that he was to wave his 
handkerchief at the door of the parlor car in which the great 
actress might happen to be, for it would be necessary to act 
promptly and to the purpose. Such an operation is always 
a little dangerous in a village. 

"Sarlat, therefore, set off, as it had been arranged, and we 
waited patiently at the station, grouped on horseback around 
the buggy. Perhaps if you had heard our remarks, you would 
have decided that this unreasonable attempt was even more 
ingenuous than unreasonable. No doubt our illustrious guest 
would struggle. She would have hysterics. We should have 
to bind her. But once at the ranch, we should make her 
amends by our respect. She should be received like an em- 
press. We should obtain her pardon and would live over again 
a few days of France, getting her to recite for us the finest 

K 



242 • OUTRE-MER 

passages in her repertory. The train did not arrive till mid- 
night, and then we saw Sarlat get down, with no handker- 
chief in sight. Sarah Bernhardt had passed through the town 
an hour earlier, by the Salt Lake City express." 

This extraordinary story vyas told so naturally, it represented 
customs so peculiar to the country, it showed such a curious 
medley of delicate civilization and savage life, that I did not 
rest until I had extracted from M. Barrin-Cond6 a promise to 
send me some of his notes regarding his residence at Lance- 
Head, his journal, if he had kept one, a few recollections at 
least. He promised, but several weeks passed before I re- 
ceived the papers I asked for, or even any news of the young 
man. He had gone back home, and I went on travelling over 
the vast Republic. I was persuaded that the documents of 
which I had so unexpectedly learned would never reach me. 
They found me, however, when I had given up expecting 
them. Whether it was the pleasure of an agreeable disap- 
pointment, — -we so seldom enjoy one! — or whether it was 
really the originality of his confidences, it seemed to me that 
they were worth transcribing just as they were, without com- 
mentary. What analysis could be as valuable as the testimony 
of the man of action, who has seen that of which he speaks, 
not, like a learned man, in the pages of books, not in the 
amateurish way of one who travels for pleasure, but as one 
who could do no otherwise. 

Perhaps, also, the place where I received the packet with 
a Toronto stamp made me more than ever sensitive to the 
picturesque quality of these pages. It was in October, in a 
quiet, deserted hotel, among the fallen leaves, beside the 
Falls of Niagara, which are still, in spite of the declamations 
of guide-books, one of the noblest and most striking specta- 
cles in this world. All that men may build around it, of 
bridges, stairways, balustrades, all the paths they may make, 
or the advertisements they may stick up, cannot affect the 



THE LOWER ORDERS 243 

inviolable and mighty beauty of these two great cascades. 
How I loved the slow, soft slide, the monotonous fall of the 
tremendous current over the edge of the rock, that here forms 
a sharp right angle ! How 1 loved the deep wail, the com- 
plaining murmur, — so much sadness in so much power, — and 
the wavering mist, that cloud of humid incense that floats 
above the lowest fall, rising, transparent in whiteness, above 
the great green mass. Yes, and I loved it, in that season of 
the year, the autumnal softness, the golden woods of Goat 
Island, without a bird, with only this strange sobbing sound 
to fill them and speak of the irrevocable end of summer, — 
symbol of the inevitable flowing away of life! 

As I walked about in these groves, so dishonored by adver- 
tisements, I regretted the coming of the white man, the civi- 
lized being, who is so much more destructive than the savage. 
I thought of the cruel but simple-minded Indians, the yellow, 
tattooed warriors, who respected nature and did not mutilate 
her. I cursed the civilized man for having defaced this 
admirable landscape with those factory chimneys, that pour 
forth their black smoke toward heaven, and those wrought- 
iron elevator towers". I felt the need of calling up before me, 
in this scene of grandeur, a freer, more hardy existence, more 
conformed to the mysterious and tragic beauty of this great 
river, so suddenly precipitated into this gulf. 

The narrative of the colonist adventurer of Lance-Head 
doubtless met this wish. Nevertheless, reading the manu- 
script over in cold blood, I still think that it does not need 
such a setting, and I have no hesitation in copying it here, 
hardly modifying it in any respect. The reader will judge 
whether it would be easy or difficult to engage in revolution 
men who live in the atmosphere of danger and conquest which 
exhales from these unquestionably true notes. He will also, 
it seems to me, more easily understand the reasons why energy 
and will are here developed, even to hypertrophy. And per- 



244 OUTRE-MER 



A 



haps the incongruity of -the circumstances under which these 
pages reached me, and which I have reproduced at the risk of 
breaking the apparent unity of my own study, will give a truer 
picture of all that is chaotic and arbitrarily connected in 
American life. 

You visit an exhibition where antediluvian monsters are 
lighted up by electricity ; you attend meetings where religious 
fervor alternates with charlatanism ; you see plays by Moliere 
given by fine actors to an audience of barbarians, next door to 
a theatre where Shakespeare's plays are given by English actors ; 
you rub elbows with Kansas farmers and Parisians ; you go in 
a Pullman car to scenes of nature, such as Chateaubriand 
described, — and all these madly complex impressions group 
themselves at last around a story told by a former volunteer, 
once garrisoned for a year in some Httle provincial French 
town, of his adventures in an unexplored valley of the Rocky 
Mountains ! 

A cowboy's story 

My ancestors were originally from Florence, whence, about 
1270, they, with several other GhibelHnes, emigrated to 
Dauphiny. We were then called Barberini, though without 
ever having had anything in common with the noble Romans 
of that name. From Barberini we became Barberin, then, by 
some means, Barrin. About the end of the twelfth century a 
certain Raymond Barrin headed a troop of young men to hunt 
out certain brigands that infested the district. " He fought like 
a Cond6," every one said. The name stuck by him, and we 
have kept it ever since. 

Whether it was that I heard much in my childhood of the 
ancestor whose name I bear, or whether it was simply the 
inheritance of a restless race, always ready for action, certain it 
is that while yet a youth I began to dream of adventures. 
When, on quitting the regiment, I found myself once more in 



THE LOWER ORDERS 245 

my father's house, with no other prospect before me than to 
grow old there, indolent and useless, the thought of such a fate 
became physically insupportable. 

Yet I loved my family, I loved our house, I loved Dauphiny, 
its rugged mountains^ its clear sky, its peasants and their 
accent, and, above all, the past which they represented to me. 
I had always been a man of the former time, a devotee in every 
sense you may choose to give to this word. You might have 
seen me on the eve of departing for the United States going 
to our village cemetery, kneeling upon our family tomb, and 
picking up some of its pebbles ; I have them still. But nothing 
could prevail against the appetite for action which consumed 
me, urging me, though so young, to cross the seas. 

I must add that being a Royalist by tradition and conviction, 
it would have seemed to me a crime to serve the Republic. I 
had no commercial acquaintance nor any capital that would 
enable me to set up in business, while to think of marrying an 
heiress was revolting to my pride. 

In short, in November, 188-, I returned as a volunteer to 
my regiment. By December my resolution was taken ; I would 
seek my fortune in America. In February I embarked at 
Liverpool with a friend of my boyhood, an Englishman, the 

Honorable Herbert V , who had decided to go with me. 

We took with us four stallions, two percherons, two Arabs, and 
my regimental groom. We were going to set up a little stud 
farm in the Black Hills of Dakota, and had been in corres- 
pondence with a ranchman of that country, named Johnson. 
Our entire capital for this enterprise was the support of this 
man, whom it happened that some of Herbert's friends knew, 
our four horses, and a draft for thirty thousand francs. I for- 
got to mention our youth and energy. Many people have 
begun under worse auspices. 

The steamer, which from motives of economy we had 
chosen, went partly by the aid of sail, so that we were seven- 



246 OUTRE-MER 



teen days in reaching New York. The passage was pretty 
rough, but I do not suffer from the sea, and as I had not only 
to take care of my comrade and my groom, both of whom 
were very ill, but also of the horses, I had no leisure for 
melancholy thoughts at the beginning of my exile. The first 
heartrending sense of expatriation took possession of me in the 
tumult of the great American city, amid the crowd whose 
language I did not know, and whom at first I found so uncouth, 
so hostile, more than all, so different from what I was used to. 
We were lodging in Brooklyn, at the recommendation of the 
ship's captain that we might find good stabling near the railway 
stations. Several days we spent in visiting the town, which 
with its hastily-built houses, some so high, the others so low, 
with their tall iron chimneys, and the fever of its populace, 
gave us the impression of something wild and monstrous. To 
fill up the measure of our wretchedness, our hotel was a verit- 
able den of drunkenness and prostitution, where we came near 
losing all we had the very first week of our arrival, as the result 
of a stupid adventure. 

Herbert and 1 had spent the first four evenings at the theatre. 
The fifth, proposing to go to bed early, we had gone into the 
bar-room to smoke awhile after dinner. Some women and a 
few men were there. One of them, a great hulking fellow, a 
former soldier, red-haired, wall-eyed, with a bulldog face, took 
upon himself to talk loud to one of the girls, looking at us the 
while. A coarse laugh that followed would have irritated me 
even if Herbert had not at my request interpreted the fellow's 
imbecile joke. He had said to the girl : — 

"Get that Frenchman to take you. He must be a 

They all are." 

1 omit the insulting word he made use of. I sprang up, 
roughly shaking off Herbert, who would have detained me, and 
walked straight to the man. Seeing me coming, but trusting 
to his strength, he began to defy me with a smile which I can 



i 



THE LOWER ORDERS 247 

still see, with the shining of a gold-plugged tooth which he had 
on the left side of his mouth. I gave him a blow of my fist full 
in the face with such strength as to bring the "claret," as they 
say in America ; that is, his face was bathed in blood. I had 
practised boxing in the regiment and was very nimble, and I had 
the good luck to avoid his return blow — he was slightly drunk 
— and to hit him a second time in the stomach, throwing him 
to the ground. I expected a scuffle, and drew back to face the 
others when, to my surprise, they uttered a murmur of admira- 
tion. The singular audience were applauding my pugilistic 
talent. They carried off their friend, but that very evening the 
proprietor of the hotel said briefly to Herbert : — 

"The gentleman would better change his quarters. Jim 
Russell is not the man to put up with that without taking his 
revenge." 

Although neither Herbert nor I was easily frightened, the 
idea of being hindered at the very outset of our enterprise by 
a low quarrel like this seemed to us so absurd that we decided 
not, as our host had advised, to change our lodgings, but to take 
our departure. The very next morning we took the conti- 
nental express-freight train, with our horses and our luggage. 
It would take seven days — a whole week — for us to reach 
the town of Sydney in Nebraska, where we had appointed to 
meet Johnson. It would have been easy to send our horses 
by this train and ourselves to take the regular express train. 
But our first impression of American life had thus been so 
disagreeable that we thought ourselves in a barbarous country, 
and would neither separate from one another nor lose sight of 
our stallions for a minute. 

We made the whole journey then, in the same car as the 
beasts. This method of locomotion was so uncomfortable that 
we paid no attention to the country through which we passed. 
I remember nothing of this singular journey across the im- 
mense continent as wide as Europe, except that at Chicago we 



248 OUTRE-MER 

had to resist by force four " tramps," who entered our car in- 
tending to hide behind our horses and " steal a ride " — that is 
their expression. These wayfarers of the United States have 
the habit of passing over incredible distances crouched on the 
floor of a freight car. At the entrance to the towns they jump 
off — a tramp must necessarily be something of a gymnast — 
and get aboard of some other train just going out, having, if 
possible, joined some more productive rapine to their theft of 
a ride. In general, these poor fellows are inoffensive ; but not 
being familiar with the picturesque features of American vaga- 
bondage, we supposed ragamuffins who could board moving 
trains to be dangerous robbers. I could laugh yet at the mem- 
ory of the way they hopped over to the bank beside the track 
at sight of the six revolvers that we pointed at them. We 
should have deemed ourselves imprudent to have had only 
one weapon apiece ! 

Johnson, advised by telegraph, was indeed awaiting us at the 
Sydney station ; but we were in fact only one stage nearer the 
real end of our journey, — Custer City, two hundred and fifty 
miles beyond. These miles we must cover on horseback, and 
the seven days in the freight car had so shattered us that we 
had not the courage to set forth at once. 

At that time Sydney had the name of being one of the most 
dangerous nests of thieves in the United States. The five 
hundred inhabitants of the town — a veritable mushroom of 
the railroad, which would have disappeared with it — spent 
their time in a series of real battles, arming themselves with 
guns and revolvers. We did not know this. But our new ex- 
perience in Chicago had made us so wary that we resolved to 
sleep on straw across the door of the stable where our Arabs 
were lodged, for they had been quite too much observed as we 
brought them in. It was well for us that we took this precau- 
tion. Toward midnight, in spite of weariness, I was awakened 
by a strange sound. I struck a match and distinctly saw the 



THE LOWER ORDERS 249 

end of a saw in the act of cutting the wood around the lock 
that fastened the barn. I wrapped one of my hands in a hand- 
kerchief and gripped the end of the saw, cocking my revolver 
with the other, and uttering the only English oath that I knew 
— you can guess what it was. The saw remained motionless, 
and on the other side of the door I heard a click like that 
which I had just made with my own weapon. 

I aroused Herbert and my servant. Our three voices made 
the robbers understand that we were in force. We heard re- 
treating footsteps ; our horses were saved. But how could we 
go to sleep again after this new alarm ? Our anxiety was so 
great that we resolved to leave Sydney as we had left Brooklyn, 
and not the next morning, not an hour later, but at once. We 
saddled our horses with our own hands. We drew Johnson's 
wagon from its shelter, put in our baggage, and harnessed the 
horses. Thus equipped, we went out into the street to call up 
to him in the hope of arousing him from his first sleep. He 
had been playing poker and drinking whiskey all night, and 
having by good luck won several hundred dollars, he was more 
accommodating than we could have hoped. Besides, like 
many Americans, he had a sentiment of national hospitality, 
and was ashamed for his country of the robber-den where he 
had met us. He was willing to go with us, and before dawn 
we were on our way. 

Our ride across the prairie lasted two long weeks, and I owe 
to it the first pleasant impressions which I had experienced 
since my departure from Dauphiny. This portion of the broad 
territory that extends between Sydney and the Rocky Moun- 
tains was not then the civilized country that it has since be- 
come. At the present day several lines of railways furrow it ; 
farms abound and the embryos of large and small towns. At 
that epoch, from Sydney westward the vast prairie of Nebraska 
presented no other trace of human life than passing cowboys. 



250 OUTRE-M L:R 

driving before them some scattered herd. Ranch succeeded 
ranch, with no road leading from one to another. The immense 
extent of desert through which our cavalcade was moving ap- 
pealed to us with a sort of savage charm, in which our feeling 
of youth and of an unlimited future counted for much. The 
desolate solitude inspired instead of saddening us, as our con- 
tact with the foreign multitude had done. We no longer felt 
ourselves weary, and we even drank with light hearts the abom- 
inable alkaline waters that we scooped up from the crevices of 
the ground — creeks, as they call them — to water our horses. 

Our excitement increased as we drew near to the mountains 
and entered the great forests of Douglas pines. The first 
spring flowers were peeping through the grass. Transparent 
running waters gushed out everywhere from fissures in the 
quartz. The sky was blue and high above our heads ; and 
besides, we were drawing near to Custer City, the town of 
whose magnificence Johnson had been boasting ever since we 
set out. We were looking forward to it as the Hebrews to the 
Promised Land. Many a year has passed since then, years of 
bitter struggle which count double and triple. Not one of their 
sensations has effaced the intense strain of expectancy of that 
April afternoon when our worthy friend led us up a hill at a 
gallop, that he might proudly point us to the end of our hard 
pilgrimage. He checked his horse, made signal to us to do 
the same, and extending his arm he said : — 

"There is Custer City." 

I looked, my heart beating hard with hope. Why should I 
blush to own to one moment of cowardice, the only one that I 
knew in all my prairie life ? Tears that I could not restrain 
suddenly gushed from my eyes — tears not of hope, but of 
despair, tears wrung from me by atrocious disappointment, 
the sudden collapse of all my high dreams. 

A wretched mining-camp lay on the other side of the valley, 
more miserable than the poorest hamlet in the Alps. And it 



THE LOWER ORDERS 251 

was to live there, in one of those hovels, in this remote corner 
of the world, to struggle there, to die there, perhaps, that I had 
left three thousand leagues behind me our little chateau in 
Dauphiny, with its three square towers and its square donjon, 
and in the chateau my mother, my sisters, everything that I 
loved and that loved me ! 

Then I looked at Herbert, and was ashamed that I, a French- 
man, should have shown such weakness before this impassible 
Englishman. He was Hghting his short pipe with the finest 
possible coolness, although I saw well enough, from the trem- 
bling of his hand, that the shock had been severe to him, also. 
I have told you that I have always been a little religious. I 
called to my aid the innermost forces of my soul. I offered 
to God a prayer of thanksgiving for having protected me since 
my setting forth, and asked him to protect me still. I put 
myself into his hands, like a little child. My horse, El Mahdi, 
pawed the ground, and neighed. It was his way of saying, 
" Here is Custer City." I gathered up the reins, and, pressing 
my knees against his flanks, set out at full speed for the city, 
leaving my childish tears to be dried by the wind of my 
headlong course. 

So, under a glorious sunset, at the foot of Mount Calamity 
Jane the " tenderfoot " Raymond died, on his first arrival 
from Europe. And in his place arose the cowboy Sheffield, 
— so named because of his knife-blade face, — he who wrote 
these memoirs. 

Some time later, about a month, I was quietly breakfasting 
in Miller's bar-room, situated in the principal street, — Main 
Street, — when a well-known miner, Big Browne, began to quarrel 
with a cowboy who had left his ranch, Eddie Hutts. 

Both drew their revolvers and fired at the same moment. 
Browne fell stone dead. His opponent's ball had gone through 
his head. But his ball had taken me square in the jaw, break- 
ing the bone, and stopping near the artery. Miller, who pro- 



252 OUTRE-MER 

fessed a particular esteem for Browne, has often, since then, 
tried to excuse his friend, with the plea that the unfortunate 
man had that morning taken a few too many " corpse revivers." 
The Americans have a jolly lot of names for the various alco- 
holic mixtures with which they delight to poison themselves : 
" a widow's smile," " a sweet recollection," "an eye opener." 
The most potent of all was the one used by Miller, the " corpse 
reviver." There was some irony in the circumstance, since the 
intemperance of that brute Browne nearly caused two deaths, 
his own and mine. 

I had sprung up when I found myself wounded, but I had 
not strength' to take a step. Everything seemed to turn around 
me, and I fell as if struck down by a blow. Consciousness 
quickly returned, with that sort of lucid and unavailing atten- 
tion that we have in dreams. I was lying on the ground near 
Browne's dead body. I could have touched it by reaching out 
my hand. Half a score of faces, all automatically moving 
in the act of chewing tobacco, were gazing curiously upon 
me, without any one thinking of coming to my aid. My 
blood was still flowing upon the floor, and I was suffering 
cruelly. I asked for a priest, but I spoke in French and no 
one understood me. For that matter, the nearest was a hun- 
dred and fifty miles away, and what need had I of a priest, to 
die like Browne? One more or less doesn't count on the 
prairie. 

Seeing that not one of the men around me so much as 
shifted the quid in his cheek, so indifferent were they to my 
appeal, I began to shout, or rather to gurgle, the names of 
Herbert and Johnson. Within a quarter of an hour my friends 
both arrived, accompanied by an ill-favored personage in a 
frock coat, with a ten days' beard, a battered silk hat, a white 
necktie streaked with dirt, and diamond studs shining in his 
frayed shirt. This was the celebrated Dr. Briggs, the princi- 
pal physician in the Black Hills, a somewhat skilful surgeon, 



THE LOWER ORDERS 253 

though even the Americans thought him " rather fond of the 
knife, you know." He was usually drunk at ten in the morn- 
ing, but by good luck he was now sober. I had abundant 
leisure to note the details of the picturesque dilapidation of 
his costume; for having caused me to be laid upon the billiard 
table he began to probe the wound, very gently, I must admit, 
while drops of tobacco juice fell from his lips upon my face. 

"Well!" he concluded, with a coolness hardly reassuring. 
"The gentleman has had a lucky escape. The ball has just 
grazed the artery. The bones will soon knit, but, as to the 
ball, if he lets it remain it will by degrees wear through the 
artery, and will suddenly burst sometime, causing internal 
effusion and sudden death. If he prefers to have me remove 
it, I can try, but I will answer for nothing. It is for him to 
choose." 

Herbert translated for me this redoubtable diagnosis. I 
mentally performed my act of contrition and said that the 
ball was to be removed. Before probing the wound, Briggs 
had cleared the room of every one except Herbert and John- 
son. He now called by name six of the men who were stand- 
ing around the door, who ranged themselves, grave and in- 
different, around the billiard table. 

"Why?" I asked Herbert, who was still acting as inter- 
preter. 

"Well," replied Briggs, "these gentlemen are the first citi- 
zens of the town, and they will testify that it is no fault of 
mine if death occurs during the operation." 

With these words I fell asleep under the sickish odor of 
chloroform. When I awoke, I had a great slit in my throat 
knd the ball in my hand. The best citizens disappeared, en- 
chanted at having had this little morning " excitement." The 
doctor received three hundred dollars. 

A month later my jaw was well, but I had lost so much 
blood that it was some weeks before I rejcovered strength. 



254 OUTRE-MER 

As to Briggs, meeting him three years later at Rapid City, at 
the time of a hotly contested election, he dragged me up to 
the platform, exhibited me and my scar to fifteen hundred 
loafers, and secured a brilliant victory over his opponent. It 
appeared that I was his sole living witness to a successful 
operation ! 

This sample of the manners and customs then reigning in 
Custer City will convince you that this abode of idleness, in- 
temperance, and assassination did not keep us long. For that 
matter, we could hardly make a living there. The smallest 
necessaries of life were horribly dear, as in all mining towns. 
For example, at Custer it never occurred to any one to ask 
change for a nickel. The five-cent piece was the unit of ex- 
penditure. It is hard to conceive of the ravages which such 
trifles made in small incomes like ours. We resolved, there- 
fore, to return to our original plan, and select a ranch, a wide 
pasturage, watered by living streams, where we could devote 
ourselves to horse breeding. 

We had the luck to find almost immediately such a place as 
we sought, and we named our little establishment Lance- 
Head, because in digging the foundations of our house we 
found an iron point, which had no doubt dropped many years 
before from some Indian's arrow. With roughly hewn beams, 
ill-planed boards, and wooden pegs, — nails were scarce in those 
parts, — we managed to put up a sort of barrack for ourselves 
and a stable for our horses. This work cost us no less than 
six months' labor, during which we were too busy to concern 
ourselves with the ranch itself. Now calculate : a fortnight's 
voyage, five days in New York, seven on the railway, two 
weeks on the prairie, come to more than a month. A month 
of expectation, a month of illness, a month of convalescence, 
make three months. Add to this six months devoted to our 
wretched little building, and you have nearly a year since we 
left our homes, — Herbert's in Derbyshire and mine in Dau- 



THE LOWER ORDERS 255 

phiny. And in the course of this time I had nearly died, we 
had impaired our joint capital, and our sole acquisition was 
this "log-house," this hut built with our own hands! 

And we held this property only on condition of defending 
it. The stream and pasturage had belonged to a former 
proprietor, Bob, a well-known horse thief, called "Yorkey 
Bob," from his native city. This rascal, by abandoning this 
property, had forfeited all his rights in it. That, however, 
was no reason why he should not undertake to fleece the new 
occupants: and, in fact, having returned to Custer City, he 
loudly proclaimed in Miller's "saloon" : — 

" I shall soon settle up with those two European tenderfeet. 
I'll teach them to enter upon my succession before my death ! " 

This reassuring remark was reported to us by Dr. Briggs, 
who lavished visits upon us. When my "savior," as he 
freely called himself, had given us this so-called evidence of 
sympathy, Herbert and I looked at one another. Each read 
in the other's eyes a desire to mount at once and be the first 
to settle accounts with this saloon bully. On the prairie one 
soon comes to this theory of legitimate defence, — to attack 
first and not be attacked. Very happily, we did not yield 
to this impulse of preventive indignation. Herbert had the 
presence of mind to concoct a test which should forever safe- 
guard us from all threats of this kind. He took aim at an 
unconscious pigeon that was cooing on the roof of the stable 
fifty feet away, and brought it down with his revolver, 

"You may tell Yorkey Bob what you have seen," he said 
to Briggs, "and add that if ever I meet him, wherever it may 
be, in a bar-room, in the street, or on the prairie, I shall do 
as much for him." 

He turned his back upon the doctor. This worthy stood 
for a moment as if nonplussed, then spat at a distant point. 
It is the American token of profound impression. I have 
always thought that his purpose in coming had been to pro- 



256 OUTRE-MER 

pose to the new proprietors, in the name of the old, a good 
and iirm treaty of alliance, cemented by hard cash. However 
that may be, Herbert's pistol-shot and his little remark 
sufficed to discourage this intention. But for two whole 
months we were on the alert, sleeping out of doors every night 
for fear of a surprise. As to precautions by day, we could 
not have taken more. The times were so troubled that if two 
horsemen saw one another at five miles' distance on the 
prairie, each would turn in the opposite direction. Strange 
desert, which man sought to make still more deserted, and 
where he dreaded nothing but his own kind! This was the 
time when the Deadwood mail was looted about once a month, 
the time when the carriage of the Lead City receiver, notwith- 
standing its escort of six horsemen, was held up, and the one 
hundred and fifty thousand dollars that it contained — seven 
hundred and fifty thousand francs in gold bars — dispersed to 
the four corners of Dakota and Wyoming. A flood of adven- 
turers, the scum of all countries and all races, had over- 
whelmed Deadwood, where a new lead of gold had just been 
discovered. Human life, which the Yankees like to say is 
"very cheap " among them, was really so cheap that to live in 
the Black Hills was to be on campaign every day and every 
hour. One soon adapts oneself to conditions that appear so 
extraordinary. It is surprising how soon one becomes accus- 
tomed to the thought of a violent death. It is the other death 
— by illness — with which the imagination can never recon- 
cile itself, at least mine cannot. 

As for Yorkey Bob, he no doubt thought differently from 
me on this subject, for he took great care, after the proof of 
address given by Herbert, to keep clear of the two tenderfeet 
from Europe. It was written that he should be killed, but in 
a different manner. He again stole so many cattle in the 
neighborhood of Custer City and near us, that the cowboys 
determined to rid the town of so dangerous a character. One 



THE LOWER ORDERS 257 

evening, when he was quietly drinking in Miller's bar-room, a 
treacherous cowboy lassoed him from behind, and threw the 
end of the cord to a horseman who was waiting outside. The 
latter set off at full speed, and Bob was strangled in a few 
seconds. He had instinctively seized his left revolver (he 
carried one on each side), and through all the frightful con- 
sciousness of that mad flight across the plain his fingers never 
loosed their hold. It was necessary to break them to get the 
weapon from him. We happened by accident to be pres- 
ent at this last episode of our enemy's death. I cannot 
better explain to you the metamorphosis which this first awful 
year had wrought in us than by telling you that we remained 
indifferent to this summary execution. 

Bob was regretted by one person only, a woman thief who 
kept a hotel at Custer City, and whose lover he was. This 
creature had a dexterity with the rifle of quite another sort 
than that of Herbert. I have seen her, not once but ten 
times, pierce a gourd at a hundred paces, sending her ball 
through a hole already prepared for the cork, without even 
grazing its edges. In every room of her hotel you might see 
the following inscription, written up with her own hand in 
enormous red letters : — 

'^ Don't He on the bed with your boots on. Don't spit on the 
blankets. Be a man.'''' 

She had committed many murders, and with her man's 
clothes and her continual oaths she was a fit companion for 
Bob, whom she would certainly have avenged if she had known 
his assassins. But enterprises of this nature were always carried 
on with masked or mufifled faces, as I have already said with 
regard to train robberies. For that matter, you can learn as 
much from the newspaper reports. This summary justice was 
more potent than legal justice as we afterward knew it, with 
its judges and lawyers, costing much more than executive 
committees such as the one which rid us of Yorkey Bob. 



258 OUTRE-MER 

And take it all in all, the second sort of justice was much 
less just. 

After this new experience, we resolved to live more closely 
on our ranch. No longer going into the towns but by way of 
exception at long intervals, we at last had no other society than 
that of cowboys, " grangers," and miners. Into these three 
classes all the inhabitants of the prairie are distributed. All 
three are alike in their aversion for civilized life, their energy 
in enterprise, and their familiarity with danger. Their am- 
bitions differ so far as to make them at times enemies. Each 
class has its heroes, whose story is continually told with ever 
new complications. Buffalo Bill is the hero of the cowboys, 
Mackay of the miners, Lincoln of the grangers, because of his 
early life. These classes form the vanguard of America, between 
the ever-mounting tide of immigration on the one hand, and 
the last redskins on the other. Or, rather, they did form it 
in the recent and yet remote period of which I speak. For 
every year the Indians draw further back and disappear, the 
waste territories become more populous. In half a century, if 
I live so long, I shall certainly see immense cities occupying 
the prairie which I have known so vast and so free. 

The proper domain of the great ranches is still at the present 
time limited only by the boundaries of the Indian Reserva- 
tions. The " Home-ranch," with its wooden houses and its 
stables of earth, is built near a spring. A score of worthy vaga- 
bonds live there under the authority of a chief, a " foreman," 
who is naturally the strongest and most clever of them all — 
I do not say the most courageous. They are all equal in 
degree, or they would not be worthy of being cowboys. Fifty 
thousand horses, cows, and bullocks wander free over Uncle 
Sam's pasturage, and these boys pass the year in counting, 
marking, and despatching them by rail to Chicago. 

It is not an easy task to conduct a drove of three or four 
thousand beasts across the prairie. A certain number of horse- 



THE LOWER ORDERS 259 

men precede the drove, others keep watch on the flanks, other, 
gather in the stragglers. They must keep away from the rail- 
roads, or an almost uncontrollable panic may set in. Returning 
from Colorado, whence I was bringing three hundred and fifty 
horses, it happened that I came upon a road just as a train was 
passing. My horses had never seen a locomotive. A terror 
seized them, scattering them in all directions, in a circumfer- 
ence of a hundred miles. It took me fifty-five days to get them 
together again. At another time a storm came up, one of those 
prairie tempests, Hke a cyclone. The enormous living mass of 
animals was driven into a single group, around which the cow- 
boys galloped like a whirlwind. It was necessary to keep the 
animals in this circle, hterally distracted as they were by the 
thunder and hghtning. We succeeded by dint of discharging 
revc' 'ers by the dozen over any head that should be uplifted. 
Had the rotary movement been checked, the enormous herd 
would have broken through on one side, and, like the wild bisons 
of a former day, they would have trampled men and horses 
under foot like so much chaff. 

Such an occupation in such surroundings requires men of 
invincible energy, ready for anything. I may add that the com- 
position of a ranch-gang resembles nothing more than that of a 
battalion of the foreign Legion of France. The refuse of the 
civilized world naturally finds refuge in it. At Lance-Head we 
had a German cook, one Italian and two French cowboys, and 
among Americans such unclassed men as Billy, the son of a 
Chicago pastor. He made us laugh till we cried, one evening, 
with stories of his youth, entirely passed in one of those mixed 
schools which have become the object of serious study by foreign 
authors who come to write up the country. I wish that one of 
those grave article-makers might have heard Billy describe the 
drawing class, and his girl classmates, busy with models of the 
principal masculine schools, while he devoted himself by prefer- 
ence to feminine anatomy. 



260 OUTRE-MER 

Among us were enigmatical personages who never spoke of 
their past, — for example, another Frenchman, whose real name 
I do not know to this day. He called himself Jean Bernard. 
He was the most dextrous lasso- thrower on the prairie, and he 
had a real passion, almost a mania, for danger. One day, to 
make sure of not being thrown by an unbroken horse, he fas- 
tened the reins to his wrists by slip knots, and set off at full 
speed. Both his arms were broken in two places, and he would 
still have hung on if Herbert had not stopped the horse with a 
ball in the chest. 

I never knew, either, the name of a Dutchman who went by 
the single name of Frank. One evening, being drunk on whiskey 
in a small Western town, he took it into his head to drive a score 
of travellers out of the hotel at the muzzle of his revolver ; then 
he barricaded himself in the house and sustained a regular 
siege. The thermometer was twenty degrees below zero, so, 
having kept on drinking to keep himself warm, he ended 
by tumbling down behind the door like a slaughtered beast. 
Thus ended his desperate prank, without the cost of a drop of 
blood. It would have cost Frank dear if he had not been the 
best fellow in the world when sober, and particularly the inti- 
mate friend of another personage who also enjoyed legendary 
authority, the Count of La Chauss^e Jaucourt. I one day met 
this Belgian gentleman, who had long been lost to the sight of 
his family, in the depths of the Indian Reservation. He was on 
horseback, escorted by his two wives, two veritable " squaws," 
who, like him, had their guns on their shoulders. He accosted 
me with an expression of vanity, singular indeed under the 
circumstances. 

"You are the Frenchman of Lance-Head. I am the Count 
of La Chauss^e Jaucourt, bachelor of letters and of science." 

He looked like a highwayman, and I took good care not to 
betray the least surprise. All these trappers are infallible 
shots. But the apparition of this bachelor of letters between 



THE LOWER ORDERS 261 

these two savage women, dressed in skins and with face tanned 
as yellow as those of his companions, long stayed in my memory. 
"Shall I ever come to that? " I thought, and such a singular 
result of my Western adventure appeared to me neither impos- 
sible nor to be dreaded, so much was I daily more and more 
overcome, saturated, intoxicated, with the charm of this free, 
primitive Ufe. And I answered myself gayly, " Why not? " 

Yes, a charm ! Even now it is the only word — taking it in 
its original sense — that I can find to express the sort of 
witchery which this existence exerted over me. Through all 
the years it still exerts it. When I try to distinguish the 
reasons of this all-powerful attraction I find, first, — a singular 
enough feeling in a country where revolvers go off of them- 
selves, — that I have never lived through days when I less 
feared the future. I knew then a sort of serenity, I might 
almost say, an incomparable security. I was fully conscious 
of my courage and my strength. I knew that my cowboys 
were as faithful as mamelukes. These desperadoes for the 
most part found in themselves — once they were free of civili- 
zation and of their past — a profound strength of personal 
honor. 

Did a rancher send me word by post, according to custom, 
that such or such a mare had been seen two hundred miles 
from Lance-Head, I had only to summon Frank, for example, 
and beg him — we never give orders in the West — to hunt up 
the strayed animal. He would assure me that he would find it, 
and I felt no further anxiety. He would set out with three sad- 
dle horses, his waterproof blanket, and his six-shooter. I was 
sure of seeing him reappear one or two months later, and the 
mare with him. He had given me his word. As to where he 
had slept or how he had lived all this time, I never so much as 
thought of asking. 

With men of this calibre I lost the idea of the impossible. 
I had lost it as far as I was myself concerned, so much did my 



262 OUTRE-MER 

whole being superabound with youthful fire, fed by the open 
air and by complete purity. The habits of this life were vio- 
lent even to tragedy, and severe even to ferocity. But they 
were not corrupt. I found a sort of interior poetry growing 
within me, as I went about my solitary rides, poetry made 
entirely from a deep communion with nature, and untranslat- 
able into words. I became animalized with the cattle, or they 
became humanized with me, as you prefer. I understood now 
the language of horses, who talk with their ears and their 
nostrils ; of the cows, who speak with their eyes, their fore- 
heads, and, above all, their tails ; of the dogs, who speak with 
their whole body, and whose thought changes so rapidly that 
one can hardly follow it. I carried on real dialogues of signs 
with these creatures, once mute to me. I carried on a still 
more sublime and intimate dialogue with the great Being who 
is above all things and creatures. When, at sunset, seated in 
the saddle and about to set forth, I looked over the prairie, its 
billows stretching away as far as the eye could reach, like a 
motionless sea under a quiet breeze, I felt a sacred intoxica- 
tion, an ecstatic ravishment that I was alive, that I felt myself 
strong, that I had within me this horizon of light and solitude. 
Almost involuntarily the prayer would break from my lips, 
" Our Father which art in heaven." I would thank God for 
the blessed gift of life, for the beauty of his visible work, for 
the favors of my lot, with a thrill of my whole soul such as I 
had never known before and have never known since. 

After what I have lately told you I should stultify myself in 
claiming that such effusions were general among the coarse 
companions among whom I had been thrown. Nevertheless, 
they all in their own way felt this presence of God, which is 
nearest, it seems, in the midst of virgin nature. Whence 
comes that sort of elevation of heart that continually appears in 
the better ones among them, their fidelity to a promise, their 
firm friendship, their virtues of endurance and loyalty, if not 



THE LOWER ORDERS 263 

from an influence like that to which we more consciously 
yield ? In any case, this was my way of feeling, and I should 
not have given a true notion of my life in those days if I had 
not reported these emotions as well as all the rest. 

When you have galloped for months and months over the 

prairie, your free domain, the day comes when, passing near a 

well-known spring, you observe a disturbance of the soil not 

there when last you saw it. Near it you see the framework of 

a covered wagon. A plough, a few instruments of cultivation, 

and one or two lean jades picketed near by attest that an 

emigrant has arrived with his meagre possessions. You urge 

your horse in that direction, and in response to your vigorous 

" hellos " you see a blanket thrown back that covered a hole 

dug in the ground. A man's head emerges, and behind him 

the heads of children, with the timid and weary face of the 

mother in the background. It is a " granger." He must have 

come this way on horseback last autumn. The place pleased 

him. He went back East for his family and his goods, and 

here he is. This hole in the ground, twelve feet by fifteen, 

will shelter them all till he gets his log-house built. 

" Hello, stranger ! " he says, "where are you from? " 

"Where are you from, my friend? You are the stranger ! " 

" I came from Nebraska — there are too many there to please 

me. I shall be better off here." 

The cowboy shrugs his shoulders. One granger is nothing. 
But to-morrow there will be ten, and the day after a hundred, 
— in a year thousantls. However, he dismounts from his 
horse, and the two men begin to talk, coldly at first, then in 
more friendly fashion. The cowboy tells the other where the 
best hunting-grounds are. Both of them, squatted on the 
ground, are busily whittling bits of wood. The woman remains 
in her hole. 

How many of these human mole-hills have I seen thrown up 
on the prairie ! These hardy pioneers of the vanguard never 



264 OUTRE-MER 

come from Europe ; they are Americans of the United States 
or Canada, whom European immigration has pushed toward the 
free West. Half farmers and half hunters, lean and taciturn, 
bronzed as redskins, and hardly more civilized, they are flee- 
ing from civilized Ufe, from cities and factories. They precede 
the armies of woodsmen, and hardly interfere with the cattle- 
breeders. Only a day comes when others follow their example. 
The best pasturages are taken up. Fences are built every- 
where, on which the ranch horses wound themselves. These 
people take possession of all the springs. It is not rare to see 
in the spring their cows with five or six calves — a wealth not 
surprising when they live near a ranch where there are five 
thousand head of cattle. In fact, they are not at all bashful to 
make the most of their powerful neighbor in all sorts of ways. 
So much so that the foreman one day decrees their expulsion. 
Sometimes his cowboys resort to threats, sometimes to fire. 
Most generally they simply drive the granger's cattle off a 
hundred miles in the night. 

Next morning the poor wretch wakes up and finds himself 
ruined. He understands the situation, and makes up his 
mind to depart. Or else he sets off to look for his cattle, — 
an endless search. The process, perhaps, appears somewhat 
summary, but it must not be forgotten that the Old Testament 
is the model of law in the West, and newcomers must submit 
to it. Besides, when it is a case of life or death for the ranch, 
it is a case of legitimate defence, in which measures of this 
sort are permitted. At least so it seemed to me when I was 
there. In fact, as soon as the number of arrivals becomes 
considerable, the ranch has nothing for' it but to give up and 
move nearer to the Rocky Mountains. It has played its 
part of vanguard and must begin over again, as far as possible 
from the grangers, and as near as possible to the Indians. 

As for the Indian, he is the cowboy's enemy only when the 
war hatchet is dug up. This came near being the case a few 



THE LOWER ORDERS 265 

months after our arrival. The foreman of one of the ranches 
had sown the prairie with quarters of venison filled with 
strychnine, to poison the coyotes. Two Sioux ate one of 
them, and died in frightful convulsions. Happily, the fore- 
man was the friend of Sitting Bull, the hero of the massacre 
of General Custer and his cavalry regiment. The chief kept 
his tribe from rising. They used to be very useful neighbors 
to us at the time when the county tax was levied. We would 
drive three-quarters of our cattle into the Reservation, and 
could then, in all honor, declare only a very small number of 
animals. 

I shall later explain to you how this apparently unhandsome 
conduct was only a too legitimate way of escaping legalized 
robbery. The Indians obligingly lent themselves to this 
stratagem, having themselves much to suffer from the thefts of 
government agents. And besides, their dread is not the free 
cavalier, who lives on the prairie as they do, but the colonist 
and the engineer. I knew Sitting Bull well, myself, who, by 
the way, having given himself up, received a house from the 
United States. He always slept before the door, outside, and 
had never slept under a roof. I happened to be with him, 
on a hill, the first time the whistle of a locomotive resounded 
among the echoes of the Black Hills. He looked long at the 
strange machine, then he squatted upon the ground, his head 
in his hands. Two hours afterward, coming back to the 
place, I found him in the same posture. 

"Sitting Bull is old," was his sole reply to my questions. 
"He would be with his fathers, on the other side of death." 

It was impossible for me to get another word from him that 
night. Did he divine that these two rails, crossing the prairie 
as far as the eye could reach, must bring to his tribe, in this 
last remote refuge of their independence, civilization, and in 
its train a certain end? I think so. 

He was a great chief, and his wish was not long delayed. 



266 OUTRE-MER 

He was killed in the uprising of 1891, and I wish him all 
peace "on the other side of death." When I think of the 
Indians I knew in those days, his gaunt face, with its long 
jaw, comes first before me, and that of a young woman, a 
Utah, whom I met with her husband in the outskirts of Salt 
Lake City. They asked me for tobacco, and devoured my 
cigarettes, wrappers and all. The brave, displeased with his 
wife, was proposing to kill her in some retired spot. In fact, 
she never reappeared. Although I did not then suspect the 
Ute's design, I have always reproached myself for not having 
continued my explorations in their company, either by good- 
will or by force. The thought of it did cross my mind in a 
sort of presentiment. I should doubtless have saved the life 
of that poor child. Her sad face, with its great, gentle eyes, 
resigned in advance, has followed me for years. 

Such events are rare, as I have already said, most happily 
so. If the rivalries of sex were there to heighten the ferocity 
of the quarrels over play or in drink, which strew the saloons 
with corpses, the whole prairie would soon be depopulated. 
On the other hand, one temptation is not rare, that of gold 
or silver mines accidentally discovered in your neighborhood. 
You hear the news from a chance passer-by. You do not be- 
lieve it. You remember having talked with the man to whom 
this good luck has happened. He has been prospecting for 
a mine for years. You have jeered at him, like others, and 
here he is, a millionaire. Other like cases come to your 
mind, and you say : — 

"Why should I not try, too? Who knows? I might have 
the same luck." 

It is the first attack of gold fever. However, the work of 
the ranch recalls you to reality. You have horses and cattle 
to sell. You must ride miles and miles. The fit passes over. 

A few weeks later your cowboys are talking around the fire. 



THE LOWER ORDERS .u7 

You listen to them. They are talking of another miner, who 
has discovered another lead. You are seized again with the 
same desire to go yourself to look for this gold that surrounds 
you, hiding itself here and there all about you, under your 
feet, perhaps. 

After a few such fits the fever grows stronger. Some day 
you take your revolver, some pork and flour, and set off over 
the rocks, your eyes bent on the ground, your mind, heart, 
will, bent on the ground, bound, dragged, hypnotized by the 
magic word which you repeat to yourself along the wretched 
roads, under burning sun or snow, "Gold! gold! gold! " 

It is a contagious madness from which few escape. I was 
affected by it like the others. I, in my turn, took up the 
prospector's pack and set out. One of my cowboys had just 
discovered a silver mine, and sold it for ten thousand dollars. 
On the morrow of that sale I succumbed ! I can see myself 
now plunging into the mountain defiles, trying, trying, contin- 
ually trying, the rocks with my eyes, my hands, my pickaxe. 
Miles succeeded to miles, and rocks to rocks. Everything 
disappeared under the mirage of gold, — fatigue and appe- 
tite, the sense of duty to the ranch I had left behind me, and 
of my dignity as man. To-morrow I should find it! To- 
morrow, and yet to-morrow ! For six days I went on this way. 
I was "possessed." On the morning of the seventh day, as I 
was saying the prayers I had neglected during this whole week 
of possession, God in his mercy opened my eyes to my wan- 
derings. If I speak of this solemnly, it is with purpose. I 
have known, I still know, minds of the finest, energies of 
the noblest, lamentably wasted in these desert depths, in pur- 
suit of gold, which no disappointment, no reasoning, no trial, 
can cure of their hypnotism. 

One of these, Hopkins, told me of weeks that he had spent 
among the crevices of the rocks, living on cold pork. The 
least smoke would have given the alarm to Indians, who were 



268 OUTRE-MER 

beating the prairie in all directions, searching for his scalp. 
None the less, he went right on with his chimerical search, 
during and after as before this time. When I became ac- 
quainted with him he was opening a new mine. His shaft 
had already gone down thirty feet. 

" A very rich mine ! There are millions down there, mil- 
lions like those of Mackay in the Bonanza. I only need capi- 
tal to develop the lead. I have written to Chicago, they will 
come — " 

Poor old Hopkins ! He already saw his millions, touched 
them, counted them. He was going to be rich, rich, rich ! 
He would have giant machines, crushing the metal day and 
night. What rapture overspread this thin, wan face, that 
seemed to have taken on the color of gold by dint of dream- 
ing of it, worn and hollowed by privation and pain, with his 
eyes of flame, the eyes of the believer and the visionary ! 
The west wind blew harshly through the wretched hut whose 
leaky roof sheltered his dreams. And I, who for a moment 
had known the same fever, 1 pitied his madness, and went 
away softly not to recall him to reality. 

If miners do not often discover mines like the Bonanza, 
they at least wash out a little gold dust in their "placers," 
and if they saved their earnings after the manner of French 
peasants, they could grow old in prosperity. But the West is 
not the country of savings-banks and small investments. It is 
the country of adventurers, gamblers, and of the all or noth- 
ing. Gold-seekers no sooner have a few hundreds of dollars, 
cowboys no sooner draw their wages, than they hasten to spend 
their money in the nearest town, a hundred, two hundred 
miles away. 

As for us, once a year we went to Deadwood and treated 
ourselves to the luxury of the one box in the Gaiety Theatre. 
One had small comfort there, in view of the fact that the 



THE LOWER ORDERS 269 

Spectators in the orchestra applauded the fine passages by 
firing pistols at the singular pictures of the ceiling. I had 
already paid dear for the knowledge of how easily a ball 
may wander from its aim. The box offered fascinating attrac- 
tions to the horrible dancing girls imported from Chicago, 
who assassinated us with winks while executing figures with 
their legs. 

When we had thrown a sufficient number of dollars to them 
upon the stage, they would come up, according to custom, to 
kiss us and ask for a bottle of so-called champagne, which 
cost six dollars and was not worth twenty cents. Often a 
facetious cowboy would lasso them on their way from the 
stage to our box, and this would give the public new occasion 
for an explosion of applause, accompanied by a new fusilade, 
in an atmosphere so charged with alcohol that it seemed as 
if the matches with which the audience lighted their pipes 
and cigars must set the whole room in a flame, like an enor- 
mous bowl of punch. 

The miner's life oscillates between pleasures of this order 
and a chain-gang life in the mines, — those at least who keep 
good faith in their illuminism. Others, more intelligent and 
more cunning, attain to great fortunes by swindling processes, 
the ingenuity of which would fill volumes. I shall content 
myself with relating the adventures of a certain Parker, who, 
in 1885, sold a mine for two hundred thousand dollars to Fris- 
sel & Company — great bankers of one of the largest cities 
of the West. Parker had sown his "placer claim " with gold 
dust over a stretch of two miles, having buried more than 
ten thousand dollars' worth of dust in the sand. 

Never did capital bring in such interest. On the report of 
two experts, grave men who came expressly from Boston, the 
mine thus "salted" was pronounced to be of incalculable 
wealth. Frissel & Company deemed themselves fortunate 
to acquire such a treasure in exchange for the two-hundred- 



270 OUTRE-MER 

thousand-dollar check which Parker demanded. The experts, 
with their fat recompense, returned to Boston. Parker no 
less generously recompensed the citizens whose testimony had 
confirmed the existence of the placer. The more honest 
among them had been content with holding their peace. " Let 
him look out for himself ! " So says every one on the prairie, 
though only two steps away from a man who is being plun- 
dered. 

As Frissel & Company never made a complaint, it is 
probable that they are only awaiting an opportunity to sell 
again this stream sown with gold, at double or treble what 
they paid for it, to a society which will scatter its stock, 
greatly reinforced by advertisements, among rich Europeans. 
It will all end with a failure, in which the weak will suffer. 
That is the law of life, as Americans conceive it. As to 
Parker, his admirable bluff gave him even more prestige than 
fortune. He is now one of the most influential citizens of 
Omaha, — " so smart a man ! " — in a fair way to become sena- 
tor. He owns four entire blocks of houses in a new city, and 
has no doubt forgotten his own knavery, and also that cursed 
Frenchman, Sheffield, who gave him a ball in the thigh from 
his Colt, No. 44, one day when he was pouring forth in public 
all the turpitudes of Frenchwomen, which he claimed to have 
learned in Paris. I had aimed low expressly, not wishing to 
kill my man, who, on his part, sent his ball on a level with 
my ear. 

Three months later, that pistol-shot came near costing me 
dear. Parker, who had lost sight of me after our altercation, 
met me one day in Custer City. He immediately had me 
arrested for assault and battery. The affair came first before 
the police justice, a certain Richardson, who happened to 
be my grocer. I owed him more than two hundred dollars. 
Besides, I had supported his election. I was honorably 
acquitted by a judgment thus conceived: "Seeing that the 



1 



THE LOWER ORDERS 271 

defendant's feelings received a more cruel wound than the 
plaintiff's leg." 

Under other circumstances I might have been obliged to 
put in the hands of this same judge a large sum, which he 
would have divided with Parker; and this possibility brings 
me to speak of that which rules all business and hinders all 
success in this Western country, naturally so rich and free, — 
the bitter, implacable war between money and the foreigner, 
particularly under two forms, which our French habits lead us 
to look upon as protections, law and taxation. 

The breeding of horses and cattle brought in my time thirty 
per cent net on the prairie. Good pasturages, as deserted as 
possible, where, like modern patriarchs, we let our innu- 
merable flocks and herds increase and multiply; resolute cow- 
boys, who never hesitated to hang a horse thief high and 
short, or to repulse grangers and Indians by force, — these 
.would have brought us in sixty per cent on our capital if we 
had not had to reckon with these two leeches. 

The tax upon capital forms the principal revenue of the 
States. Declarations naturally tend to reduce it, and it would 
be hard to reckon the number of false oaths given in the spring 
of every year in the Western Territories. A special commis- 
sion then sits, and rectifies at will three-quarters of these 
declarations. Its decisions are based upon anonymous accu- 
sations, which abound there as elsewhere, and chiefly on the 
political affiliations of the tax-payers. If he is a friend, his 
declaration is at once received. If an enemy, his estimate is 
doubled, tripled, quadrupled. Finally, a surplus of five to ten 
per cent is added to the total, according to the deficit to be 
made up, which is the same as saying, according to the num- 
ber of county treasurers who have succeeded one another in 
office. What must become of a foreigner who, being pledged 
to no party, is skinned by all? Only one ground of hope is 
left him, — the difficulty the assessors may find in counting his 



272 OUTRE-MER 

herds. We had at Lance-Head an Arabian stallion, who had 
become a real wild beast in the midst of his wild stud. He 
had half killed an inoffensive wayfarer who was crossing the 
prairie not far from his favorite pasturage. These stallions set 
upon all persons whom they do not know, with the fore hoofs 
and the teeth. The terror spread abroad by this animal saved 
us from assessment. The assessors were forced to trust to my 
statements. 

Not to perjure myself, as I have said, I sent my droves over 
into the Indian Reservation at the time of making oath, and I 
therefore had only a small number of cattle to declare. Not- 
withstanding this precaution, our taxes were rated so high as 
to amount to half our profits. For, three times during my 
career of cowboy, the county treasurer made off with the bank, 
so that in the end we had to pay a nine per cent surplus to 
balance the budget. Am I right in affirming that false returns 
became a legitimate defence in such a case? 

As may be supposed, the ranchmen are not behindhand in 
this matter. I can still recall the countenance of Fyffe, treasurer 
in 1 88-, — now in the penitentiary, — when the foreman of the 
Anglo-American Company solemnly declared that, in conse- 
quence of the rigor of the winter, he had not a single milch 
cow left. As a fact, the company possessed over thirty thou- 
sand head. It must be added, that the said foreman had 
had too many " corpse revivers " that morning. Fyfife was 
petrified with admiration of such audacity. " What pluck ! " 
he exclaimed, and at once accepted this astounding declaration. 
Then a large bonus, offered by a rival company, made him 
reverse his first decision, and with one stroke of the pen he 
raised the declaration twenty thousand times. This roused the 
cowboys to a simulated lynching, where he nearly left his bad 
extortioner's skin. 

How can one defend himself against persons of such a state 
of conscience ? To what can one appeal ? To the law ? Every 



THE LOWER ORDERS 273 

little Western village has, side by side with its two or three 
generals and twenty or thirty colonels, an equal number of 
lawyers. 

Ah, these lawyers ! The scourge of a country that has an 
elective magistracy ! With their feet in the air, and their 
cigars in their mouths from seven in the morning till nine 
at night, they meditate on possible lawsuits. Not a quarrel, 
not a difference, not a hasty word, but its echo reaches them, 
and they throw themselves upon you with offers of gratuitous 
services, with the enticing prospect of large damages. You 
accept. The suit begins. Soon the confusion is such that no 
one understands anything about it. Then your lawyer informs 
you, with a long face and tearful eyes, that your suit is lost. 
He tells you the reasons, which are precisely the opposite of 
those that he brought forward to induce you to take this step. 
The better to convince you, he takes you secretly to the judge, 
who confirms the views of the estimable lawyer. However, a 
compromise is possible. You subscribe to it, and leave this 
hell. Costs, two hundred, three hundred, a thousand dollars, 
according to your property. The amount is most amicably 
divided between the two lawyers and the judge. I have seen 
one of our compatriots, guilty of killing a robber who had first 
drawn upon him, unable to secure the most just of acquittals 
except by spending twenty thousand dollars ! 

You are indignant, are you not? I used to grow indig- 
nant over this frightful absence of professional honor. It has 
exceptions, indeed, but very few ; and one finally becomes 
accustomed to it, as to rain in autumn and snow in winter. 
It is with the magistrates in these small Western towns, as with 
doctors and dentists. A few more anecdotes before I conclude. 
Herbert came home, one day, from Omaha, where he had been 
to have his teeth attended to, with his mouth full of little holes 
that the operator had dug in his teeth, after putting him under 
gas. He suffered from them so much, that he went back and 



274 OUTRE-MER 

had them filled with gold at ten dollars a cavity ! One of my 
cowboys was wasting away in consequence of a course of treat- 
ment prescribed by a doctor who had diagnosed a disease 
of the stomach. He had been told to take daily a packet of 
powders that seemed to us suspicious. We had the powder 
analyzed, and found that the only object of this so-called remedy 
was to prolong the sick man's malady. He had already paid 
his poisoner a hundred dollars — two months' earnings ! 

These moral blemishes, and hundreds more that I spare you, 
are the inevitable consequences of the formidable conflict of 
energy and ambition carried on upon the prairie. I was aware 
of this necessity even when I was suffering the most from it. 
When we found ourselves clashing with some more powerful 
barbarity, Herbert and I would remind one another of a pic- 
turesque sign in which we had seen the symbol of this budding 
civilization. We had read in a railway station during a strike 
of railway employees : — 

" Passengers, this line is boycotted. You'd better buy an 
insurance ticket, as this train will be run by a green engi- 
neer." 

Everywhere on the prairie we came upon tokens of the 
" green engineer," and I would think of France, so beautiful, 
so pleasant, so complete, true land of love even in its faults ; 
and that it needed only to have left it to appreciate the charm 
of living there, the charm that an American so well expressed 
to me one day when I asked him what had most struck him in 
Paris. 

" Well, the finish of it," he replied. 

And I have not returned to that dear France, and I do not 
know that I shall ever return there. Where one's family is, 
one's country is, and mine is now in that Canadian city on the 
shore of that vast lake, stormy as a sea, where I went to repair 
the losses which the last Indian insurrection inflicted on the 
poor ruined ranch of Lance-Head. 



THE LOWER ORDERS 275 

And now that I finish this account, which I may well call 
posthumous, since the cowboy, Sheffield, is dead in his turn and 
and has given place to Francis Raymond, a feeling of home- 
sickness for the prairie comes over me. I feel how deeply I 
loved that desert, so sad yet so attractive when one has passed 
there years of exuberant hfe, revolver in hand, rifle on the 
pommel of the saddle. I have my cowboy saddle before me. 
I seem to hear the wind of those nights that I spent out of 
doors ; the wind that, as in the early days of the world, spoke 
to me so many mysterious words. I can see the immensity of 
the steppe, here and there cut by canons where at noon the 
does hide with their fawns ; the quiet streams where the pumas 
come to lie in wait for the frail, delicate antelopes. I feel my 
horse's hoofs rustling the tall, dry grass of Dakota. The wind 
brings me the fresh vegetal aroma of the sage brush of Wyo- 
ming. The whole great country lies outspread before me, wild 
and dangerous, but free ; a country where I experienced that, 
take it all in all, life is less painful there than anywhere else ; 
a country of high emotions, where I was so near to nature, so 
near to God ! I touch with trembling fingers the tanned 
leather of this saddle, and I must needs conquer the insane 
desire that takes me to be seated in it as formerly, to plunge 
my spur into my brave horse as formerly, and to go farther, 
always farther, westward — I, the father of three children ! 



VII 
EDUCATION 

When one has seen a certain civilization in some of its 
fully developed representatives, and has formed an idea, 
correct or incorrect, of its good qualities and its defects, its 
value and its insufficiency, it remains to test these notions by 
a counter experiment, if I may so speak. One must try to 
see in the formative state these individual men or women, 
whom one has already seen exercising their matured powers. 
To put it more simply, the indispensable corollary of the 
study of the life of a people is the study of the educational 
processes of that people. The nature of the instruction given 
by a country to its youth is doubly instructive; for on the 
one hand it reveals the educator's conception of men, — 
hence of the citizen, hence of the entire nation, — and on the 
other hand it permits you if not to foresee, at least to have a 
presentiment of what the future of the nation will be, when 
once the children and youth thus brought up shall become the 
nation in their turn. 

For example, is it possible perfectly to understand England 
without having understood Oxford, and the sort of semi- 
nary of "gentlemen" established there many centuries ago? 
You seat yourself on the turf of New College, at the foot of 
the ancient ramparts of the city; in the close of Wadham, 
near the apse of the chapel built by Dame Dorothea, whose 
statue may still be seen, stiff and severe under the folds of her 
robe of stone; on the edge of the pool of Worcester, where 
De Quincey dreamed; in the grandly quiet park of St. John's. 

276 



EDUCATION 277 

Only to see the young barbarians, as Matthew Arnold called 
them, playing tennis in the beautiful setting which owes 
everything to the dead, only to follow them, as in their flannel 
suits they seat themselves in a canoe and glide along the 
venerable walls of these ancient cloisters; or on horseback, 
trotting beside the grassy graveyards scattered everywhere in 
this city, — all the future of this youth is unveiled to you. 
The boy who has been in such surroundings during his im- 
pressionable years must be, he cannot but be, just what in 
fact nine out of ten Englishmen are : healthy and traditional, 
capable of all endurance, of all physical daring, and deeply, 
thoroughly conservative, even when he believes himself to be 
a radical; respectful of the past in his most intense ardor for 
individual action, because he has felt it too deeply, too much 
realized its benefits, to be anything else. 

On the other hand, you visit a French Lycee with its 
barrack-like buildings, its narrow, hemmed-in playgrounds, 
the promiscuity of its dormitories, the bare ugliness of its 
studios and class-rooms. What more is needed to show you 
that the young men there brought up must be physically im- 
poverished, nervously overstrained, robbed of joy and spon- 
taneity. Discipline, too little individualized to be intelligent, 
must inevitably either cow or irritate him. He comes forth 
from it either a functionary or a refractory, crushed or revolted, 
nearly resembling the man careful only of his own interests 
and the anarchist, two equally baleful types of the civilized 
man, wasting himself either in feeble platitudes or in destruc- 
tive insanity. Such is the fatal end of a system of culture 
apprehended as the reverse of nature and tradition, first by 
the men of the Convention and then by the Emperor, the most 
ill-omened of all their ill-starred works, most calculated to 
dry up, at its source, the energy and virtue of our middle 
class. Here, as everywhere, education explains history, 
because it explains customs. 



278 OUTRE-MER 



It is not always easy to grasp the influence of a whole social 
system upon the schools, and again of the schools upon the 
social system. In the United States, in particular, the very 
character of the nation makes it almost impossible to define 
its system of education, spread as it is over an immense 
extent of country and absolutely without central direction. 
The power of states, of cities, especially of individuals, to 
initiate action conspires incessantly to modify the innumer- 
able centres of instruction which have spontaneously blos- 
somed out upon this soil where social forces seem to have 
a plasticity very like the plasticity of natural forces in the 
youth of the planet. The chances are great that each educa- 
tional building will be constructed on a different plan, for each 
educator is apparently a man with his own ideas, and each 
pupil even is an elementary personality. 

I remember when I was in Newport being entirely non- 
plussed by the question of a negro who waited upon me in the 
hotel, a sort of black giant whom up to that time I had ad- 
mired solely for his dexterity in carrying in the flat of his 
hand a tray loaded with six or seven entire dinners. 

"Is it true, sir," he asked me, "that you are going to write 
a book about America? " 

" Perhaps," I replied. " But why do you ask? " 

" Because I should much like to have a copy to read this 
winter in college." 

"The negroes are so vain," said a New Yorker, to whom I 
laughingly related this dialogue. " He wanted to make you 
think he knew how to read." And he added, "Since you are 
collecting anecdotes about the 'colored gentlemen' don't 

forget this one. The other week Lord B , one of the first 

nobles of England, was travelling beyond Chicago. At a cer- 
tain station one of the Pullman car porters approached him 

with the words, 'They tell me that you are Lord B .' 

'Yes,' replied the other. 'Would you give me your hand?' 



i 



EDUCATION 279 

asked the negro. The nobleman thought this request showed 
a touching humility. He extended his hand to the unhappy 
son of slavery, who perhaps had formerly been himself a slave. 
What did the darkey do but shake the nobleman's hand with 
the proud remark, 'You know, Lord B , I am an Ameri- 
can citizen and I propose to tell all my fellow-citizens that 
the British aristocracy is all right ! ' " 

My witty interlocutor was mistaken. It was not in bragga- 
docio that the waiter in the Newport hotel had spoken of his 
college. I had the proof of this when, in the course of the 
winter, being in a little Southern city in which the newspapers 
had made known my presence, I received a letter which I 
cannot refrain from setting down here in all its artlessness, so 
significant does it appear to me. 

" I write you a few lines to let you know that I have suc- 
ceeded in entering college as I hoped to do. I entered Janu- 
ary I, and am getting along very nicely with my studies. My 
wish was to take the full, regular course, but I am not able to 
do so as I must support myself while in school. I must there- 
fore content myself with the normal and scientific course. I 
do not precisely know what I shall do next summer. I have 
thought of going back to the hotel in Newport, but nothing is 
decided. I am looking for a copy of your book when it is 
finished." 

What can be the spirit of a college on whose benches a 
servant, twenty years old and more, may take his place for six 
months in the year, between two terms of service, and the 
fact not appear in the least exceptional? What must be our 
opinion of the man himself, his demands of life, the thoughts 
he exchanges with his fellow-students; what of an entire 
society in which such features are of daily occurrence? Once 
more measure the abyss that separates the Old World from the 
New. And yet the very exclamation that falls from a for- 
eigner's lips on meeting such incidents — "How American 



280 OUTRE-MER 

that is!" is a proof that he recognizes a certain character 
common to all the manifestations of this singular country, 
however unlike they may be. 

This unity it is that I would try to discover in the complex 
problem of education, having special reference to certain 
groups of very clearly defined facts. At the advice of some 
of my friends, I have chosen the schools of Boston as suffi- 
ciently representative types of primary instruction; Harvard 
as representing universities for men and Wellesley those for 
women; of technical schools, West Point, the military acad- 
emy, the St. Cyr of the United States. The reason of this 
choice is easy to give. Massachusetts has been for many 
years the matrix, so to speak, of the figure from which the 
genius of America has taken its moral and intellectual stamp; 
it is therefore probable that the spirit and method of Ameri- 
can teaching are more visible there than elsewhere. This is 
why the Boston schools, and the universities of Harvard and 
Wellesley, whether they are superior or inferior to thousands 
of other schools and hundreds of other universities, are doubt- 
less more striking and illustrative to a passing observer than 
the others. On the other hand, West Point has this advan- 
tage over other technical schools, that the human product, 
such as is there made, must be pretty much the same in all 
parts of the world, for everywhere war resembles war and 
officer resembles officer. The similarity of the results to be 
obtained permits us to understand better the difference in 
methods. These are, if you like, four pretty strong meshes 
in the vast tissue of instruction thrown over this whole great 
country. Considering how they have been woven, the reader 
will be able to judge of the probable value of the stuff. If he 
wants more complete details, he will find them in the fully 
attested works of M. de Varigny, in the acute observations of 
the superior woman who signs herself Th. Bentzon, and 
finally in the clever volume of M. Pierre de Coubertin, Les 



EDUCATION 281 

Universites Transatlantiques. Upon West Point in particular, 
Count Louis de Tarenne has written very interestingly in his 
work, Qiiatorze mois dans P Amerique du no7'd, a repertory of 
incomparably full and accurate facts concerning the United 
States. I myself make no claim of doing more than set forth 
here a hypothesis which fits in well with very many of the 
facts so carefully collected by these conscientious and dis- 
tinguished observers. 

Let us try to imagine a traveller who knows absolutely noth- 
ing of America and who lands in Boston with letters to a 
prominent resident of that city. It is the time of full activity 
in this old New England metropolis, consequently, it is winter. 
The Bostonian comes to the traveller's hotel in a sleigh which 
ghdes rapidly over the frozen snow. His first act is to take 
him, with justifiable pride, to that central park which he calls 
the Common, and which has the peculiarity little known in the 
United States of dating from far back, — from 1636. Next our 
man takes his guest by a network of streets, the crookedness 
of which speaks of relative old age, to the " Old State House," 
the scene of the Boston Massacre, the museum where, side 
by side with a marvellous Japanese collection, are some very 
singular relics, — a glass case full of boots and shoes, among 
them a pair of boots worn by Napoleon at St. Helena. The 
Bostonian will not fail next to show the river Charles, where, 
it is said, are seen the finest sunsets in America, — the athletic 
club, with its gigantic swimming bath in the basement, fed by 
running water, — Beacon Street with its fine residences, and 
Music Hall, where more music is given during the season than 
in all the Conservatories of Europe. 

More than once during these comings and goings the trav- 
eller has questioned his guide as to one or another building 
which has appeared to him larger, more pleasing, of newer and 
more elaborate style than the others, and every time the Bos- 



282 OUTRE-MER 

tonian has told him that it was a school. Without considering 
it a matter of much importance, the traveller asks how many of 
these schools there are in Boston. He knows already that they 
are public and free, for his companion has made much of these 
two points, but he finds it extraordinary indeed to be told that 
there are six hundred and seven of them. Upon this he is 
taken to the office of the superintendent of this immense edu- 
carmg machine. The gentleman is absent on one of the tours 
of inspection made necessary by his truly ministerial office. 
But his secretaries are there, — women, of course, — and they 
interrupt their playing on the type-writer to search the library 
for divers pamphlets bearing on all sorts of educational prob- 
lems : studies of the proper height of chairs and desks from the 
hygienic point of view, reflections on methods of teaching, 
statistics and criticism of courses and examinations, statistical 
tables of teachers and scholars, calculations of expenses. 

When the traveller on returning to his hotel, still pursued 
by that figure six hundred and seven, begins the reading of 
these apparently dry reports, he finds it impossible to stop. 
He is taken possession of by them as by a unique sort of 
romance. They are, in fact, the romance of a city, athirst to 
know, hungry for culture, and which desires to learn and 
understand through all its inhabitants, to saturate itself with 
intelligence. This is one of the American fevers — this fanati- 
cal, almost unhealthy longing for knowledge, but it is only 
a phase of that grand and noble fever with which this whole 
country is consumed, crude as it yet is, and chaotic and un- 
formed; too recent, and yet homesick for civilization. 

To measure accurately this effort after "more light" as the 
dying Goethe said, you must analyze into its component parts 
that figure six hundred and seven. These schools are sub- 
divided into six grades, in accordance with the different ages 
of the children, and also with the different courses of study. 
First of all, at the very bottom of the ladder, if one may so 



EDUCATION 283 

speak, there are thirty-six kindergartens, attended by nineteen 
hundred and sixty children. Next come four hundred and 
eighty-one primary schools, with twenty-five thousand pupils; 
fifty-five so-called grammar schools, with more than thirty 
thousand pupils; ten Latin or high schools, attended by three 
thousand four hundred scholars; twenty-four special schools, 
twenty-two of them held in the evening, with an attendance 
of five thousand five hundred students; and finally a normal 
school, destined to the maintenance of the members of the 
teaching staff. This staff contains a thousand six hundred and 
fifteen men and women, who hardly suffice for the immense ser- 
vice which, during the first nine months of the present school 
year— 1893 — represented to the city an expenditure of two 
millions of dollars. Of seventy-three thousand one hundred 
and seventy-six children or youth between five and fifteen 
years, the total number in Boston, fifty-three thousand six hun- 
dred and thirty-eight were at that date receiving, without the 
cost of a centime, an instruction that extends from the first 
rudiments to a culture which we reserve for our middle class. 

And the city does not find itself satisfied with this amazing 
result. Between 1889 and 1892 it built, furnished, equipped, 
and opened, at its own expense, a new Latin school, four 
grammar schools, seven primary schools; bought land for 
three others, and spent, besides its ordinary estimate, another 
sum of two million dollars in the work of improvement. 
Such progress did not hinder the committee who reported 
it from providing for new foundations in the year to come. 
One observation among many others gives an idea of the 
spirit with which these indefatigable propagators of knowl- 
edge are animated. Speaking of the normal school, a re- 
porter wrote in entire good faith : — 

" It will be understood how necessary is this addition when 
it is remembered that the building is in precisely the same 
state that it was in fifteen years ago." 



284 OUTRE-MER 

These lines from an official pen show better than any com- 
mentary what the words "recent" and "old" signify on 
American lips. 

Upon this you close the bulky collection of documents. 
Beneath the minute but indisputable details of these statistics 
you have perceived a great social fact which is too much in 
harmony with facts which you have yourself observed not 
to be correct; namely, the profound vitality of civic feeling 
in the United States. This prodigality of millions has no 
other principle. It expresses the conviction felt by all citi- 
zens in their inmost hearts, — that the community should 
spare nothing to furnish to all its members the opportunity to 
develop the gifts they received at birth. But what commu- 
nity? Certainly not America; the government that sits in 
Washington has nothing to do with these expenses. Not even 
the State to which the city belongs; but the city itself, the 
city which these youth see with their own eyes, which might 
be pictured as a being to whom they are bound by ties of 
flesh and blood. In consequence, these educational benefits 
are not to these youth an anonymous gift, for which they 
know not whom to thank, the studies they undertake are not 
directed by a remote superior council of functionaries whom 
they will never see. They see and know not only the admin- 
istrators of this great system of municipal instruction, but also 
the generous givers, who, to their public contributions, are 
continually adding private gifts. All these direct influences 
contribute to develop and exalt in them the same civic feel- 
ing which impelled their elders to support and aid in the 
great work of their culture, so that, once rich and great, their 
constant care will be to aid their younger brothers in their 
turn. 

Here, as in France of the Middle Ages, as in Italy during 
the Renascence, strong municipal life naturally produces 
strong municipal virtues, and it produces them in the woman 



EDUCATION 285 

as well as in the man, — a fact entirely in conformity with the 
genius of the country, with its strong sense of equality. In 
all this work of the schools it is curious to note to what de- 
gree the woman rivals the male citizen in spontaneity and 
generosity. To take only two or three most typical facts; it 
is thus that in 1884, a lady of Boston, Mrs. Quincy A. Shaw, 
submitted to the city authorities her project of opening some 
rooms for manual traitjing in the schools. Her thought was 
to found cooking courses and lectures on the care of a house 
and its linen for the young girls and for the boys printing, 
cabinet-making, and shoe-making. She has spent a great sum 
in this work since 1884; the report tells us how much — a 
million and a half of dollars. 

Under the impulse of this entirely personal good will, two 
cooking-schools were opened in 1885, and received one hun- 
dred and fifty pupils apiece, and as Mrs. Quincy A. Shaw 
was at this moment busy with the kindergarten, two other 
Boston ladies undertook to go on with these two experiments, 
"The first," says the report, with the pride of local patriot- 
ism, "which have been established in America." In 1886 a 
third cooking-school was opened under the same conditions. 
The city has since accepted the charge of all of these, and 
now the women are seeking for other enterprises to which to 
devote their energies, time, and money. The committee 
considered the experiment conclusive, and undertook to con- 
tinue it in the name of the community for reasons which are 
worth citing, since they also are stamped with that civism 
which is at once so ardent and so sagacious. After showing 
all the advantages which the art of cooking may procure to the 
poor girl as well as to the rich, — rendering the one capable 
of making her home more comfortable, fitting the other the 
better to manage her servants, — the report takes a larger view 
of the question, and, speaking of the place of manual training 
in education, it concludes : — 



286 OUTRE-MER 

"This training also serves to counteract one of the greatest 
evils which threaten, the nation: the excessive disparity 
between the rich and the poor. This disparity often results 
from the scorn with which many people of means look upon 
those who work with their hands. This is a false conception, 
for which there will be no place if all children are brought 
up to work with tools under the direction of teachers in work- 
ing-clothes, at the side of school-fellows who, rich and poor 
alike, work with the same tools. The result of this teaching 
will be a higher citizenship.''^ 

This higher citizenship, — the expression is hardly trans- 
latable so little of the thing is found in centralized countries, 
— this impulse to love one's city and make it beloved, this 
pride in one's native place, and this care to make it ever 
better, — all these are the secret of such generosities in educa- 
tional things. They sometimes attain really fantastic propor- 
tions. There is a citizen of Illinois who made a single gift 
of six hundred thousand dollars to the University of Chicago, 
on condition that others would increase the sum to a million. 
The required four hundred thousand were subscribed the same 
day. Thus a capital of five million francs was paid down in 
a day, which the first giver doubled, for his own share, — say 
ten more millions of francs. He desired, said a journalist, to 
secure to his city a superior "standard" of higher education. 
This American expression, which might make a companion to 
the "record," is also difficult to translate. The "standard" 
is the value of a manufacturer's mark, the tape by which you 
measure the quality of the product. You find there applied 
to the things of the mind, to literature and science, that which 
makes the very basis of this mercantile Democracy — that 
estimate by comparison, which these people still express by 
the verb "to beat." Of a hotel or a view, a fine book or a 
certain brand of champagne, of a great artist and a steamboat 
enterprise, they say equally that it "beats anything in the 



EDUCATION 287 

world." Perhaps this self-love, which we think somewhat 
childish, is the condition of the astounding vitality of the 
local centres from which comes the vitality of the whole coun- 
try. Shakespeare somewhere speaks of one of those men each 
of whose thumbs is a man. America is a country whose cities 
are all prairies, a republic whose each city is a republic, an 
immense corps of which each city is a corps. This energy of 
the municipal unit may be known by a thousand signs. While 
studying the processes of instruction, we feel that we are 
close in touch with it. 

Admitting that the school is an entirely local creation based 
upon the good will of individuals, the methods of instruction 
ought to be all ahke conformed, not indeed to abstract and 
conventional theories but to the peculiar needs of the city, its 
individual and encompassing hfe. A short tour of investiga- 
tion suffices to show the traveller that in fact education is 
minutely and systematically organized here with a view to the 
adaptation of the individual to his surroundings. The teachers 
are both men and women, but especially women. These zeal- 
ous creatures earn nearly nine hundred dollars a year. Most 
of them are unmarried, and though in constant contact with 
male teachers "cases of scandal," as they say here, are ex- 
tremely rare. These women teachers are, above all, moral 
persons. Their sense of responsibility enables them to exert 
an all-pervading influence over the children and youth whom 
they instruct. Perhaps we may find here one of the reasons 
for the peculiar respect in which women are held in America. 
They are a part of the strongest and most tender impressions 
of youth. 

It is worth while to see these school-mistresses, most of them 
pretty, teaching their classes, especially in the primary schools, 
where girls and boys of ten to twelve years sit side by side. 
They proceed mainly by questions put to the school at large, 
the pupils asking permission to reply by raising the hand. 



288 OUTRE>-MER 

The mistress chooses one, then asks another question, looking 
up this or that one who is backward. It is very simple, very 
animated, very pleasant. The great variety in the exercises, 
none of which lasts more than half an hour, forbids fatigue. 
In the beginners' classes, as also in the grammar grades, the 
feature which most strikes a middle-class Frenchman, of gram- 
mar school education, is the constant use of the concrete and 
positive method. Modelling in clay plays an important part in 
this method of instruction. In almost every schoolroom that 
you may visit you will see a whole collection of figures modelled 
by the children of both sexes, who follow you with curious 
eyes, — simple objects made in the likeness of the humble re- 
alities that surround them, a carrot, a loaf of bread, a biscuit, 
a butterfly, a flower. Here are some busy with a lesson in 
which they must draw and describe a potato that lies before 
them. Others are busy copying some leaves. They must 
identify the tree and give some positive facts about it. Others 
have just finished some rather complicated woodwork, made 
after patterns drawn with chalk upon the blackboard ; pigeon- 
holes, boxes, pieces of carved wood that might be adjusted to 
some machine. In all these details you recognize the same 
principle ; to make the eye, the mind, and the hand work to- 
gether ; to train the child to observe, and to regulate his thought 
and actions in accordance with his observation. 

After seeing these methods of education, you understand 
better certain peculiarities of the American mind,^ its almost 
total lack of abstract ideas, and its amazing power of recogniz- 
ing reality, of manipulating it in the domain of mechanics as 
well as in that of business. The aim is, to the most remark- 
able degree, to confront these awakening minds constantly, 
indefatigably with ikvtfact. The exercises which they choose 
are the evident proof of this. Thus I have seen the pupils in 
a somewhat advanced class occupied by way of written exer- 
cise, in replying to a newspaper advertisement for employees. 



EDUCATION 289 

When they are grown up, they will have such advertisements 
to draw up. These things are facts, and this education bows 
to facts. They will need to write letters relative to travelling, 
and here is a class of little girls of twelve who have just been 
dealing with the subject: "A trip to Europe." 

I read two of the copies that the teacher is correcting. 
The first is the work of a child who has never been abroad. 
It is a very dry and meagre production, which, however, re- 
veals a minute effort after accuracy. The child names the 
ship on which she is supposed to have made the voyage. She 
mentions the day of setting out, the length of the voyage, the 
number of miles made each day, the name of a hotel in Liver- 
pool and one in London. All these details are accurate and 
real. She has heard relatives or friends mention them, and 
she has retained them. The little girl of the second paper 
has actually made the journey. She had observed and remem- 
bered each daily event, the incidents, the meals, the conver- 
sation of her mother and the stewardess. She had observed 
the small size of the London houses and the air of " refined 
gayety " of Paris. It is all told without effort and sometimes 
with a good deal of naturalness. It seemed as if I were trac- 
ing to its source that talent for conscientious and truthful 
writing which in America even more than in England has 
produced an enormous amount of feminine literature. The 
attention here is carefully directed to the daily current of 
events. Fifteen or twenty years hence this little girl will go 
to the poles or to Egypt and her notes of travel will appear 
in some magazine, if indeed she does not undertake some 
monograph on art or history, science or literature, or if again 
she does not try her hand at a ''short story," that brief and 
sensational study of life, in narrative form, which is really the 
summit of excellence in American literature. 

Returning from these visits, you must take up the report of 
the school committee, to read it with the picture before you 



290 OUTRE-MER 

of these boys and girls with their spirited, resolute faces, 
these masters and mistresses with their lively, familiar ways, 
these light and well-ordered schoolrooms, these well-stocked 
laboratories — all this little world of study in which nothing 
calls up the thought of discipline or constraint. You will 
receive the fullest light on the whole system of instruction by 
reading the part of the report entitled "Examination Papers." 
This is a list covering pages and pages of questions put to the 
pupils in written or oral examinations. There is not one, 
from the simplest to the most difficult, which was not de- 
signed to put the child's mind in an atmosphere of positive 
action, to connect it with facts by a firm and sufficient tie. 
In the matter of spelling, for instance, the easiest dictation 
exercises contain facts of domestic life or counsels of practical 
utility. 

"While I remain in the country this summer my time will 
be occupied in active recreation." "John, come here. Did 
you hear me quoting the old saying, 'A stitch in time saves 
nine ' ? " 

If the examination is in composition, subjects like these 
are given: — 

"Wanted : a young woman in a photographic gallery. Must 
have practical and artistic experience and good references. 
Address, Room 15, 154 Tremont Street, Boston, Mass. Write 
the letter that you would write if you desired this place." 

" Write a letter to some one you know who has never been 
in this school. Describe the playground, the building, your 
room." 

"Write to a friend, giving advice as to her health, telling 
her the things you have learned about the care of the body." 

If it is geography, this is how they prepare children for 
their future travels : — 

"Sail from Cape Ann to Cork, with a cargo. What goods 
would you take and what would you bring back? " 



EDUCATION 291 

** Make an excursion from San Francisco to Paris. Describe 
the route. What articles would you bring back? " 

Then follow an infinite number of questions upon climates 
and products, both vegetable and mineral, and the division 
of industries. 

If the study is mathematics, mental arithmetic will occupy 
the first place, of course, and all the problems will refer to 
processes of buying and selling. 

If it is history, all the questions turn upon the annals of the 
great Republic, and especially on New England. 

"When and by whom was Boston founded? Describe the 
Tree of Liberty, the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea-party; 
Describe a New England village, a Sunday morning in 
colonial times. Give an account of the landing in Massa- 
chusetts Bay and a short description of the leaders of the 
first colony." 

Evidently the pupil who is prepared to reply on all these 
points has been educated with a view to becoming a business 
man in a democracy and if possible, in a special city of the 
democracy. The citizens who manage this vast organization 
for civic instruction are finding, nevertheless, that in these 
programmes there is too little room for the workingman. The 
report sketches a project for a new school of mechanical arts, 
more complete than any other. It will be called — no doubt 
by this time it is already called — "The Mechanical High 
School." The prospectus is summed up in these words, which 
I transcribe textually : — 

"For the first time in Boston the child who is to enter 
industrial life will have, at the public expense, the same 
opportunities for preparation which have long been given to 
those who are preparing for business or professional life." 

Having reached this point, it seems to me that these people 
must have attained their ideal, which can be expressed in one 
word: the complete identification of education and life. 



292 OUTRE-MER 

You find the same ideal on your first view of a university. 
I have taken Harvard for the type, precisely because, being 
the oldest, it seems best to show the persistent tendency of the 
American mind. In the first place, its history alone shows 
how essential a characteristic of this mind is faith in indi- 
vidual initiative and local vitality. It is the story of a con- 
stant struggle for an ever more complete autonomy. It would 
be interesting to put opposite it the history of an old French 
university — that of Paris, Montpellier, Toulouse — as a test 
of the degree of divergence between the two democracies. 
With us, the contrary work has been done; institutions once 
independent and powerful have been brought under the cen- 
tral administration, the service of higher education has become 
a state service. When there was a question, a few years ago, 
of giving back an independent existence to these universities, 
now absorbed in the university, one of the most eloquent 
orators of the Republican party, M. Challemel-Lacour, main- 
tained, with the support of our Senate — like him Republican 
— that such a measure was opposed to all the work of the 
Revolution. His Jacobinism saw clearly in this matter, and 
no argument more strongly shows the wretched tyranny of the 
work of '89, essentially hostile to all liberty, destructive of all 
living energy. 

As for higher education in America, it began where ours 
ends. When in 1636 the University of Harvard — then of 
Cambridge — was founded, the General Court of Massachu- 
setts — that is to say, the State — establishing it by a vote, 
this Court — consequently the State — reserved to itself the 
right of control. The "overseers" or surveillants were at 
this date the governor and magistrates of the colony, by vir- 
tue of their office, and they had full power to administer the 
funds of the college. But in a few words of the charter was 
already indicated the future of the University: "All the 
funds," it ran, "including gifts, legacies, and donations " — 



i 



EDUCATION 293 

From the first the founders foresaw that the co-operation of 
private persons would be the principal support of their insti- 
tution, and already in 1636 a Nonconforming clergyman, of 
the name of John Harvard, — thus becoming the godfather of 
the college, — made the first of a long series of gifts by virtue 
of which the University to-day has a capital of twelve million 
dollars — or sixty millions of francs. 

The right of inheritance and possession carries as inevitable 
corollary the right to administer one's possessions at will. 
Therefore the first one hundred and fifty years of Harvard's 
existence saw continual efforts on the part of the president 
and professors or "fellows" to secure this second right. Not 
until 1 8 14 did they obtain it, and then subject to the control 
of the "overseers." It remained to secure that these should 
themselves be incorporated in the University. 

It is interesting to follow this attempt during these eighty 
years. They began by modifying the law under which the 
overseers were nominated. They thus became an indepen- 
dent and self-perpetuating body. This independence was 
already a guarantee of a sort of autonomy. A law was then 
passed that the State of Massachusetts should not have the 
right to modify the statutes of the University without the 
united consent of overseers and corporation. A new step 
forward was taken in 1843. The law of 1810 provided that 
the board of overseers must include fifteen clergymen, all of 
them Congregationalists. In 1843 it was provided that these 
might be of any denomination, and in 185 1 the board was 
authorized to dispense with clergymen altogether. In 1854 a 
bill of still more liberal scope was introduced, giving all the 
graduates of Harvard a vote in the election of overseers; but 
this law was not passed until 1863. It contained, however, 
this restriction, that the overseers thus chosen must be resi- 
dents of Massachusetts. This restriction clause was abolished 
in 1880 as the last vestige of injurious state supervision. 



294 OUTRE-MER 

At the present time, being mistress of her funds, which she 
administers according to her own judgment, mistress of her 
methods of instruction, which she arranges at her own will, 
herself naming her overseers and professors, this University, 
which began by being doubly official, since it was under the 
government also of the Church, has no longer to reckon with 
any but her own members. She is free, in the deepest and 
fullest sense of the word, and the statistics are there to show 
that to this increase of independence corresponds an increase 
of vital force. The number of students, which was eleven 
hundred in 1870, was in 1893 two thousand nine hundred 
and sixty-six. There were forty-one professors ; there now are 
eighty-six. There were eighty-one tutors ; there now are two 
hundred and ninety-four. The aid extended to poor students 
amounted to twenty-five thousand dollars ; it is now eighty-nine 
thousand. There were a hundred and eighty-four thousand 
volumes in the library; there are now four hundred and 
twelve thousand. Now translate these figures into concrete 
realities ; they show that within the fifteen or twenty years 
since the last thread was cut which bound together the State and 
the University the affluence of hfe has doubled in this organism, 
that its overseers have been more active, its professors more 
diligent, its students more in earnest. Let our French fac- 
ulties to-morrow be thus masters of themselves, not nominally, 
but really, without minister or inspector or council to rule 
them ; let them inherit and possess ; let them modify their 
courses of teaching according to their own views and the needs 
of their region ; let the teachers, chosen by their own colleagues, 
feel themselves really in their own place, and the students, too, 
and with all this let the great central schools be suppressed, to 
leave to the universities their full range of influence, — and the 
same causes would produce the same effects, and the intel- 
lectual life of our provinces would suddenly awake. Alas ! we 
are not travelling in this direction. 



EDUCATION 295 

Harvard University is composed of the college, — properly 
so called, — a scientific school, a graduate school, and six 
professional schools. Two of these — the schools of law and 
theology — are in Cambridge, like the college itself. The 
four others, those of medicine, dental surgery, veterinary sur- 
gery, and agriculture, are in Boston. The college students 
are about two-thirds of the whole number. It is therefore 
the college life that we must try to picture to ourselves in order 
to understand the soul of Harvard, and the social type elabo- 
rated during the four years of the full course, — the " fresh- 
man," " sophomore," "junior," and " senior " years. These are 
the names taken by the student from twelvemonth to twelve- 
month, and they explain themselves. 

Equality and activity, especially equality, are the essential 
characteristics which emerge, on a first glance, over the sort 
of life which these young people lead during these four years. 
If the English proposed to send sons of the nobility to Oxford, 
in order to create the complex type of the "gentleman," the 
Americans appear, on their part, to have proposed to bring 
together poor boys and rich boys in order to abolish, or even 
to forestall, that prejudice against paid work which is, in fact, 
the principle most destructive of democracy. To put our 
finger on the distinction, I may transcribe here a letter quoted 
by Mr. Frank Bolles, the treasurer of the University, which 
by itself alone will, better than any analysis, make the reader 
acquainted with the conditions under which the young Harvard 
men pursue their studies. It is the detailed account, year by 
year and figure by figure, of the methods employed by a poor 
student to pay his own way through college. It will be seen 
that the expenses of a student are pretty high, especially for a 
comparatively small town such as Cambridge. But here we 
see another American characteristic. Having the alternative of 
diminishmg his expenses or increasing his work, the American 
always prefers to increase his work. 



296 OUTRE-MER 

The poor student, whose statement Mr. Bolles reports, fixes 
his freshman expenses at three hundred and eighty-one dol- 
lars, his sophomore expenses at three hundred and sixty-one, 
those of the junior year at three hundred and ninety-five, and 
those of the senior year at four hundred and sixty-two. He 
had twenty-five dollars of debts when he entered Harvard. 
He was, therefore, obliged to earn money, and a large sum of 
money, during these four years, while at the same time pursuing 
his studies. 

The details of the methods he employed are very significant. 
As freshman, he " made " three hundred and forty-six dollars, 
thus divided : a prize of two hundred and fifty dollars, a loan 
of fifteen dollars on his watch, seventy-one dollars earned by 
type-writing for his fellow-students, eight dollars by selling 
books, two dollars by tutoring. 

As sophomore he used the same methods, except that, in 
view of the smallness of the prize gained that year, he decided 
to wait at table. His work as waiter brought him thirty-eight 
dollars. It may be remarked that this is not an isolated case. 
Many Harvard students gain by this means, especially during 
vacations, the small overplus of resources which they require. 
This student, in his second year, added to this business that of 
preparing the brains of sheep for the lectures of Professor 
William James, the great psychologist. 

The third year, the junior, appears to have been easier. Tu- 
toring brought him in more — one hundred and twenty dollars. 
He got work in the library that helped to set him on his feet. 
A large prize which he took in the fourth year put an end to 
his difficulties, and he left college at the completion of his 
studies, having met all his own expenses during the four years, 
and put aside a small sum of money. 

This is a perfect specimen of the American student, and Mr. 
Bolles is right in concluding at the close of this letter : " A 
young man who has gone through all this is certain to succeed 



EDUCATION 297 

in any calling." He cites among possible careers, railway 
service, journalism, book-publishing, political life, and teaching. 
The elasticity of this programme of the future is simply in 
conformity with the genius of a country where a man finds it 
perfectly natural to change his profession at forty, fifty, or sixty 
years. One consequence of this facility of guiding his life in 
the most opposite directions is that the " poor scholar " is 
unknown in the United States. The students who wait upon 
their classmates, napkin on arm and dish in hand, and who will 
presently be sitting on the same benches with them, attending 
the same lectures and passing the same examinations, have, if 
one may so speak, taken and given a lesson of destiny. They 
know and they demonstrate that the man of energy accepts all 
and conquers all, if only he will. Neither he nor his fellow- 
students will forget the lesson. 

Such letters give a sort of sketch, accurate though cold, of 
one kind of life. To give it color, to change these true though 
abstract details into a living picture, one must go himself to 
Cambridge, and see with his own eyes the setting in which 
such a career is possible and even normal. No excursion 
could be easier. Hundreds of electric tram-cars connect it 
with Boston by day and night. You cross the broad river 
Charles ; then about two miles of a country all built up with 
small wooden houses, with verandas, where the eternal rocking- 
chair awaits the American's wearied repose. 

The car is filled with young men and young women. Of the 
latter, in this suburb of a student town, not a single one would 
suggest the idea of a bad character. The demi-grisette, the 
half-venal, half-sentimental mistress, who abounds in our Latin 
quarter, does not exist here. The type that you have met in 
these cars is chiefly that of a girl from eighteen to twenty-five 
years old, thin and slight, with quantities of auburn hair, a deli- 
cate, freckled face, bright eyes, and a smile that has a sort of 
stern languor, telling of too much work, too much tension, too 



298 OUTRE-MER 

much endeavor — not her own, but of her race, of a whole 
long ancestry behind her. The well-kept teeth show white 
between the parted lips, which droop at the corners. The 
voice is harsh and slightly nasal. The neck is thin, and sug- 
gests a thin body, the frail anatomy of which you guess at — 
for it is winter — under the double-breasted coat, the knitted 
jacket, the flannels, and the "combinations." The whole per- 
son stands on india-rubber shoes, and is enveloped in India 
rubber, suggesting the factory and the waterproof. 

Where is this child going? Is she a student of the " Annex," 
the portion of the University reserved to women? Is she a 
dressmaker going back to her shop, a salesgirl going to her 
store, a doctress going to her patient, a clairvoyant about to 
give a private seance, an actress returning from a rehearsal? 
This creature might equally well adapt herself to all situations, 
exercise all callings, except that of trafficker in love ; and the 
youths who sit facing or beside her, with books, or racquets, or 
skates under their arm, according to the occasion, are also pre- 
pared for all feats of daring, except an adventure of gallantry, 
I am told that a certain number go into Boston for nocturnal 
dissipation. It is possible. But in that case, this is a real 
debauch, a lower phase of life, so coarse, so distinct from all 
the rest, that the young man is degraded by it, and not cor- 
rupted. The difference is great. The temporary household 
of the Parisian student, with its daily intercourse and its 
romanticism, bears witness to greater refinement, but it is far 
more dangerous to the healthiness of future life. 

The aspect of Cambridge on the winter day when I reached 
it by the gliding of the rapid but commonplace car, was de- 
lightful to see. The great red University buildings looked all 
the redder against the white snow. The little wooden houses,. 
in general the dwellings of professors, wore a pleasant look of 
friendliness, gray and neutral between the white ground and 
the red of the vast edifices reserved for Ubraries and museums 



EDUCATION 299 

and students' rooms. The pines showed black against the cold 
blue sky, and so did the leafless branches of other trees, slender 
and fragile frameworks where sparrows were twittering. Purple 
berries gleamed in the shrubberies, making gay this peaceful, 
quiet scene of study. 

There were students passing and repassing on the wooden 
sidewalks, swept clean from snow. They were simply dressed, 
and between their lips they held the short wooden pipe of 
a shape special to Harvard. They go where they please and 
do what they please. More independent than their contem- 
poraries at Oxford, they are not even subject to the obli- 
gation to be in at a fixed hour, which is the first servitude 
of a Balliol or Christ Church man. The second is the neces- 
sity of presence at table. Harvard men know no more of 
this than of the other. They are not, like the English, set in a 
sort of lay monastery, part cloister, part club, and part gym- 
nasium. The rooms in which they live in the buildings set 
down here and there in the neighborhood of Memorial Hall 
are subject to no supervision. They live there as at a hotel, 
giving no account of their actions. 

There is a great diversity in the elegance of these rooms, as 
well as in their price. Most generally two students live together. 
One parlor serves them as study and two closets as bedrooms. 
Two desks, two bookcases, two sets of furniture, divide the 
study into two distinct domains. Everywhere are the inevi- 
table rocking-chairs, and on all the window-seats of the guillo- 
tine windows are small mattresses with pillows, where they 
stretch themselves to read, to smoke, to look at the view. On 
the walls are hung the medallions of clubs and photographs 
that tell of the favorite pastimes of the owners of the room : 
football teams, yacht crews, theatre scenes, views of Europe, 
Egypt, the Holy Land. Almost all of them have been " abroad," 
and the rest are going. In the most expensive rooms which, 
like those in Claverley Hall, cost six, seven, eight hundred dol- 



300 OUTRE-MER 

lars, the student lives alone, and usually the two little rooms 
give the impression of a club man : almost no books, a slight 
desk with folding cover, steady enough to scratch off a note 
upon, but too fragile to support a dictionary or to work upon : 
everywhere mementos of races, balls, and hunting. In this in- 
equality of expenditure so ofTensive to us, we really find the 
democratic spirit of America. What is equal with them is 
respect for the individual. He is left equally free to spend 
his money or not to spend it, to have it or not to have it. 
Any regulation, however wise, would encroach upon this vig- 
orous freedom of action which to them appears to be the 
grandest of human qualities. On reflection we see that they 
are right. Our system, which makes rich children and poor 
children live in our schools under the same material con- 
ditions, has for its most certain result to develop the most 
furious envy when this identity of life suddenly ceases with 
the young man's entrance into the world. This disastrous 
influence has less chance of being born when there has never 
been any such identity. 

One of the most striking features of Harvard life, giving 
the measure of the spirit of independent action, is the number 
of clubs or societies which the students maintain by them- 
selves outside of all administrative control. There are no 
fewer than forty-nine of them, each one founded with a posi- 
tive and definite purpose. To read over their lists and pro- 
grammes is to pass in review all the interests of the American 
student, his labors and his pleasures. 

Some of these clubs, like the Porcellian, are the precise 
image of a closed circle of New York or Boston. The club 
derives its name and emblem — a boar's head — from a cele- 
brated dinner given in 1791 by one of its members, at which 
a whole pig was served as a roast. You observe, here again, 
in the fidelity with which these young men adhere to the 
comic surname, in the pride with which they show you some 



EDUCATION 301 

last century's reviews on the shelves of their library, the con- 
stant desire to overlay the present with the past. One of 
them, who had passed some time at Oxford, used a very sin- 
gular and suggestive expression to describe how much in a 
new civilization is slight and superficial and thin. 

"We feel the want of density so much here," he said. 

The principal object of some other clubs, like the "Hasty 
Pudding," is to give dramatic representations. The name of 
this club, which also recalls a culinary whim, corresponds well 
with the character of good humor everywhere imprinted on 
the little house where it abides. Most of the pieces played 
on the stage of the ground-floor are satirical buffooneries 
composed by the students themselves. The spirit of these 
lively boys is shed abroad on the walls in grotesque pro- 
grammes, drawn with a certain power of gayety. I am told 
that the club is expensive, each member being assessed fifty 
dollars a year. At the time of my visit a broad-shouldered 
young man, with the build of a boxer, his fine eyes hidden by 
spectacles, was seated at the piano, accompanying himself in 
singing a Yokohama song. He went to the Pacific islands 
last year, and doubtless his companions will go in a year or 
five or ten. There is quite a body of Americans in the extreme 
Orient. Japan is so near — thirteen days from Vancouver, 
fifteen from San Francisco. In this students' club I find a 
tiny trace of this exotic influence. I found it in Washington 
the other day when I sat at dinner beside a young girl who 
was all absorbed in Buddhism, and in Boston where a very 
distinguished doctor, who has been completely initiated, said 
to me, drawing two concentric circles on the table : — 

"Christianity is to Buddhism what this small circle is to the 
large one." 

And his conversation was filled with formulae of Hindoo 
wisdom, which seemed all the more striking coming from 
those stern and decided Yankee lips. 



302 OUTRE-MER 

"There are many roads that lead to the mountain," he con- 
cluded, speaking of the different religions, "but the landscape 
around it remains always the same." "We are all living on 
the surface of our being," he said again. 

The young fellows of the Hasty Pudding have not got so 
far as to plunge into these formulae beneath which lies the 
abyss of the grand, but deadly metaphysical vision. But I 
shall not be astonished if there is some day at Harvard a 
Buddhist club, as already, beside the circles for pleasure and 
for the theatre, there is a Christian circle, the St. Paul, and a 
philosophical circle, the Harvard Philosophical Club, whose 
purpose is thus described in the prospectus: "A genial and 
pronounced individuality is as great a requirement for mem- 
bership as to be deeply versed in philosophy." 

Then there is a whole series of literary and secret societies 
that by an artlessly humorous pedantry are called by Greek 
letters: the Delta Phi society, the Delta Upsilon, the Phi 
Beta Kappa, Pi Eta, Theta Delta, Zeta Psi. There is a 
series of sporting societies, the Boat Club, the Cycling Asso- 
ciation, the Cricket Club, the Football Club, the Baseball Club, 
the Photographic Society, the Camera Club ; there are political 
clubs, the Democ7-atic, and the Republican ; musical societies, 
the Banjo Club, the Guitar and Mandolin, the Pierian. 
There is a series of associations for the publication of serious 
or humorous periodicals, the Lampoon, the Crimson, the Ad- 
vocate, the Monthly. The youthful editors of these periodi- 
cals would not be American if these enterprises did not 
become real business undertakings. Last year, to give only 
a single example, the Crimson brought in to its editor-in- 
chief five hundred dollars, and a hundred dollars to each of 
the other editors. I have looked over some of these sheets. 
They are, in fact, real newspapers, filled with news interesting 
to the University. I read in one of them an excellent criti- 
cism of Le Mariage Forqe given by the members of the Cercle 



EDUCATION 303 

Franqais and a discussion of a decree of the overseers. Ad- 
vertisements abound, filling two or three pages. In the 
Advocate I find a witty essay on " Feminology," which closes 
by a quotation from Maupassant : ^'Cette canaillerie charmajite, 
cette trojnperie raffinee, cette malicieuse perfidie, toutes ces per- 
verses qualites qui poussent an suicide les amanis imbecilement 
credules et qui ravissent les autres. ' ' 

This quotation and a poem entitled Fleur du mal with the 
last line "I hear the mocking laugh of Baudelaire," bear wit- 
ness to the freedom of mind of these young men and the 
boldness of their range of reading. This admiration for 
French writers of the extreme Left is one of the features that 
most distinguishes America from England. But it suffices to 
converse with the men and women who profess it, to perceive 
that their interest is entirely in the sphere of the intellect and 
the will. It does not reach the deep sources of private life, 
which are still simple and somewhat primitive. The un- 
healthy complexity of our great artists is a subject of curiosity 
to Americans of both sexes, a sort of moral bibelot, to be 
looked at and handled like a cup of peculiar form which 
nobody ever drinks out of. Here, especially in this whole- 
some setting of Harvard, the difference of surroundings puts 
these young men in the same mental attitude toward our con- 
temporary authors that they have toward the Alexandrian 
poets and the Arabian story-tellers. The realities of their 
own life, which preserve their hearts from being poisoned by 
the senses and their wills by dreams, are work and sport, 
good fellowship and athletics, the intense attractions of the 
gymnasium with its running track and its thousand appliances, 
which include instruments to develop all muscles, even to 
those of the fingers. They are safeguarded, too, by their 
precocious aptitude for organization, which enables them to 
administer for themselves such establishments as Memorial 
Hall, where eleven hundred of them eat daily at an expense 



304 OUTRE-MER 

of more than fifty thousand dollars a year. They handle these 
sums with the wisdom and the strict probity which they will 
one day apply to the management of their own property. 

Again, we perceive that in the university as in the school the 
Americans have sought and have obtained the perfect harmony 
of education and life. Here again they have been guided by 
facts. Their good sense has preserved them from the too 
tempting imitation of European things. They have neither 
built up a false English university, as might have been feared, 
nor a false German university. But to look into the faces of 
the students, so energetic, so virile, with an expression of 
decided candor all their own, you feel that they have succeeded 
in producing just the stamp of man which their democracy 
needs. You feel also that they have not yet done away with 
that trace of stern harshness natural to the son of a recent and 
still incomplete nation. And yet Harvard is the most tradi- 
tional of American universities, the most like Europe. How I 
wish I had leisure to test my observations of it by the others, 
above all those of the West, whose student cheers express a 
singularly untamed joy of living. Here, for example, is the 
" cheer " of the University of Illinois, " Rah-hoo-rah, Zip-boom 
ah ! Hip-zoo, rah zoo, Jimmy, blow your bazoo. Ip-sidi-iki, 
U. of I., Champaign ! " and that of the University of Indiana, 
" Gloriana, Frangipana, Indiana ! Kazoo, Kazah ! Kazoo, 
Kazah ! Hoop Lah ! Hoop Lah ! State University, Rah ! 
Rah ! Rah ! " and that of Denver, " U, U, U, of D, Den-ver, 
Ver-si-tee ! Kai Gar Wahoo Zip boom — D. U. ! " The 
University of North Dakota follows with her cry, " Odz-dzo- 
dzi ! Ri-ri-ri ! Hy-ah ! Hy-ah ! North Dakota ! " 

I doubt whether the roar of a lion is more wild and blood- 
curdling than these onomatopoean cries, issuing from broad 
chests and robust wide-open lungs, suggesting health that would 
suffice for years of hard work and bitter competition. Health 
is the first of conditions in a country without a middle class, 



EDUCATION 305 

where the rentier does not exist and where the student who 
is rich to-day will to-morrow, by a freak of fortune, be the poor 
engineer, the needy journalist, the business man in straitened 
circumstances, the doctor without patients ; in fact, the man 
compelled to struggle for life, as though he had never been 
either freshman or sophomore, junior or senior. Let us not 
be anxious about him. He is ready. 

And they are ready also, the freshmen, the seniors and the 
juniors of that woman's college, which rises at the edge of the 
little Lake Waban, at Wellesley, near Boston, its great red 
building in the shape of a Latin cross, with its brick villas and 
its wooden cottages. A college ! How inadequately that word, 
so sad and dreary in French, represents the freshness and 
poetry of this oasis ! It is most truly a young girl's university, 
a sort of realization of that fantasy of Tennyson's, " The Prin- 
cess," concerning which Taine has written, "No jest is more 
romantic or more tender. You smile to hear weighty, learned 
words issuing from those rosy Hps. . . . Clad in hlac silk dresses, 
with golden girdles, they listen to passages of history and prom- 
ises of social renovation." 

But that the toilettes of the lovely Wellesleyans are more 
modern, these lines of the great philosopher might be placed 
at the head of the catalogue of this singular institution. I say 
singular, involuntarily taking the Gallo-Roman point of view, 
which admits of no other means of education for women than 
the convent or the paternal roof. The girls' school with us is 
but a lay convent, without that which alone corrects its seclusion 
and monotonous discipline ; namely, confession and com- 
munion. In vain it bears the name of academy, after the 
fashion of boys' schools ; it is radically, unalterably different. 
Nowhere is the radical inequality between the two sexes, which 
forms the very foundation of our society, more perceptible than 
in the difference between the methods and the results of the 



306 OUTRE-MER 

two modes of teaching. I have elsewhere tried to show for 
what infinitely complex reasons Americans uphold the truly 
democratic dogma of absolute equality between man and 
woman. True to their great principle of accepting all the 
practical consequences of the truths in which they believe, 
they could not but make the education of both identical. In 
the mixed schools that reform has already been realized so far 
as primary and secondary education is concerned. Wellesley 
is one of the most complete attempts to realize it in higher 
education. 

This attempt — like all those which the traveller finds in this 
country, where the State is nothing — was due to private ini- 
tiative. At the risk of being monotonous we must not weary 
of repeating this observation. All things grow clear in the 
United States when one understands them as an immense act 
of faith in the social beneficence of individual energy left to 
itself. This, so to speak, is the mystical basis of their realism, 
the message that they bring to the world, and above all to us 
French people, whom the most retrograde of revolutions has 
for the last hundred years made the slaves of a centralized 
state. Nor must we weary of telling of the moral dramas of 
which those generous foundations are nearly always the out- 
come. Here is the one to which Wellesley owes its birth : — 

In 1863 there lived in Boston a distinguished lawyer, Mr. 
Henry Fowle Durant. His portrait gives one the idea of a 
face most refined, radiant, with an expression at once gentle 
and bright. The somewhat stern line, observable in the faces 
of so many Americans, is seen at the corner of the nostril. 
The chin is rather long and prominent, the face absolutely 
smooth, with that expression of fixed intensity which we find 
among all who are compelled to self-restraint and self-com- 
mand, such as doctors, clergymen, and actors. Those who 
have known Mr. Durant speak of him as having a body so thin 
and frail, so deUcate in its motions, that he reminded them 



EDUCATION 307 

invariably of the words of the apostle, " He will be raised a 
spiritual body." We may imagine from such details and from 
small photographic likenesses one of those too sensitive organ- 
isms which life touches very deeply, and which cannot support 
it unless they interpose between themselves and reality an 
abstract faith, in which they wrap themselves for protection. 
In the year 1863 this tender-hearted man lost his only son. 
The trial v/as so severe that instinctively he sought refuge in 
religion. He became, says the biographer from whom I bor- 
row these details, the most intense of evangelical Christians. 
It was in this crisis of mysticism that the vigorous spirit of 
positivism, always present in the American, showed itself. He 
abandoned his profession as a lawyer, which no longer seemed 
to him to be in accord with the ardor of his new convictions. 
His wife and he began to consider what use they could make 
of their fortune. Debating the matter, they conceived the 
scheme of founding a university for women, the basis of which 
should be the Bible. " Mr. Durant," adds the same biog- 
rapher, " said strongly both in pubhc and private, that the 
object of his college was to form learned Christian women. 
Christian wives and Christian mothers." 

In 1871 the first stone of the college was laid. It has now 
had twenty years of activity. The sum expended by the 
founder was more than eight hundred thousand dollars. Other 
persons added to the endowment, and at the present time this 
succession of private munificence has brought the property of 
the college to the sum of $1,636,900. 

When modern Americans talk of Christianity we are haunted 
by the recollection of puritan fanaticism, but we err. They 
understand thereby simply a rather small number of essential 
principles which must be taken " for granted." This is the 
expression which they constantly make use of, when they are 
questioned regarding their moral or religious education. Their 
fundamental realism causes them to consider as useless any 



308 OUTRE-MER 



discussions which call into question these first postulates. So 
far they are all naturally Christian, if we may say so. But 
these doctrines once admitted, their tolerance is infinite. I 
observe, for example, in the list of professions of faith repre- 
sented at Wellesley sixteen different sects ; Congregationalists, 
Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, Unitarians, Reformed, 
Quakers, Lutherans, Universalists, even Swedenborgians. This 
diversity of beliefs goes to show in what spirit the Biblical 
programme of Mr. Durant has been developed. One of the 
teachers in the College has written : " What we should like to 
suppress in this world is the frivolous and the ascetic woman." 
Visiting the College yourself, and rectifying your observations 
by conversation and the reading of the catalogue, you perceive 
that everything here is arranged with a view to this double 
result, — on the one hand, to form the minds of these young 
girls by a thorough instruction equal to that of the young men 
of Harvard or Yale, and on the other to adapt these girls to 
the habits of elegance and comfort common to the prosperous 
class in their country. If the religious Ufe is hidden beneath 
this free regime it is only as the regulator of a machine is 
hidden. 

You enter the principal building and you find yourself in a 
hall, resembling, with its green plants, its pictures, its statues, 
its lacquered furniture, the interior of one of those sumptuous 
New York hotels, in which entire famihes pass their seasons 
year after year. You mount the wooden staircase, wainscoted 
like that of a club. All along the corridors, which are also fur- 
nished with statues, pictures, and plants, open the students' 
rooms. They usually live two together, like the Harvard stu- 
dents. They have two little sleeping-rooms and a common 
sitting-room, which does not differ in the least from the sitting- 
room to which every American woman who is at all refined is 
accustomed. Photographs, flowers, furniture of light wood, 
and lounges with cushions of chintz, printed in fanciful pat- 



1 



EDUCATION 309 

terns, show off the elegance of these dainty Uttle chambers, the 
occupants of which, by the way, have nothing monastic about 
them. They are constantly asking one another to tea. They 
also invite young men. Every Saturday evening the gymna- 
sium ceases to be an athletic club and is transformed into a 
ballroom, to which they invite their friends from Boston and 
Cambridge, as if they were hving at home with their parents. 
They go and come, in and out of the house, without giving 
account of their conduct. Some are rowing on the lake, others 
riding on horseback, others driving phaetons. Others have 
gone by train to Boston, alone, of course. They merely said 
that they were going into town. No surveillance is exercised 
over them during their absence. No questions are asked of 
them on their return. Since they intend entering on life, to 
become individuals capable of defending themselves, they 
must be educated with this end in view. And, moreover, a 
most equitable law which punishes the seducer equally with 
the forger and the thief, would protect them even were their 
own characters and those of the men whom they met in- 
sufficient. 

This Draconian code appears to us in France to savor 
strongly of Pharisaism. It seems to us, also, that it must give 
room for the detestable practice of blackmailing. The value 
of laws is measured by their results, and the States where these 
laws are in force are certainly those in which the personality of 
women is developed with the greatest amount of energy and 
happiness. Surely this shows progress beyond countries like 
our own, where the relations of the sexes are still so grotesquely 
unequal that when a case of seduction occurs it is the woman 
who is dishonored, and the illegitimate child must be wholly 
cared for at the expense of the mother, since the search after 
paternity is forbidden. We shall have changed our regime 
several times yet before we shall dare on this point, as on so 
many others, to attempt one of those moral revolutions which 



310 OUTRE-MER 

are as fruitful as political and social revolutions are vain and 
criminal. 

Are the girl students whose youthful grace is sheltered in 
this elegant and comfortable Wellesley equal to the men, and 
are they as well protected? Are they contented with their 
lot, or do they long for still more liberty? Surely, if they 
wish to criticise the system to which they are subjected, the 
habit of public debate, as well as the quality of their instruc- 
tion, admits of it. Nothing is more curious than the contrast 
between the severity of their studies and the coquetry of those 
palaces and cottages standing on the shores of that little lake 
in that beautiful park. The entrance examination requires 
a considerable knowledge of English literature, history and 
geography, mathematics, Latin, Greek, and of one of the two 
great living languages besides English — namely, French and 
German. 

There is no limit of age for this examination, so that pupils 
of sixteen years may enter the college at the same time as 
those who are much more advanced in life. They gave me 
one example of a student of sixty years of age, already a 
grandmother, who presented herself and was admitted. In 
this country, where so many begin the work of life over and 
over again, young girls do not consider it extraordinary to 
have a companion of that age. There is no exclusive principle 
as regards the entrance of students. They may be poor or 
rich, daughters of millionaires or of very humble parentage. 
So long as they are morally honorable, no one asks how they find 
the means to pay the three hundred and fifty dollars per annum, 
which is the cost of board. It often happens that a young 
girl, quite ready for examination, takes a place as a cashier or 
saleswoman in a store, as secretary in a hotel, or as copyist, 
in order to make up the sum. Others serve their classmates 
as dressmakers or milliners, take care of the rooms or carry 
messages. Here, as at Harvard, this extra work is not only 



1 



EDUCATION 311 

tolerated but esteemed. It is a species of instruction in 
equality, given by those who undertake the service to those 
who can do without it, but who must nevertheless treat their 
less fortunate companions with unvarying politeness and sym- 
pathy. For that matter, after a very brief journey in the United 
States one is no longer astonished at the consequences which 
the democratic idea carries with it when constantly, indefati- 
gably applied. Among the significant facts given to me by 
the former cowboy, whose story I have transcribed, I neglected 
to note this: One of his friends and he had hired a cook 
while staying in a Western city, and this woman stipulated 
in her engagement that once a week she should have the use 
of her master's sitting-room to receive her friends. 

A simple little fact of this kind proves well enough how 
very intact mercenary occupation leaves the spirit of indi- 
vidual pride among those who undertake it, even when they 
are by extraction and education really inferior; all the more 
so when there is really no inferiority. On the other hand, 
one wonders when these Wellesley girls find time for supple- 
mentary work, so full and so many are the courses. Here, for 
example, is the Greek course, which a pupil in her first year 
must have passed in order to become a sophomore, — cer- 
tain speeches of Lysias, the Apology and the Crito of Plato, 
five hundred lines of the Odyssey of Homer. In Latin 
she has studied the works of Cicero, the Gennania and 
Agricola of Tacitus, and one or two books of Horace. In 
German she has mastered the general history of literature, the 
first part of Faust and the dramas of Schiller. In French 
her studies include Le Cid, Horace, Andromaque, Le Mis- 
anthrope, L'Avare, and, among modern works, L' Abbe Con- 
statitin. As regards philosophy, I cannot resist translating 
some of the lines from the programme of a class: "Types of 
ethical theory; psychological investigation of the laws of the 
human mind as a propa2deutic basis for theories to account 



312 OUTRE-MER 

for moral experience and to justify ethic methods. The doc- 
trine of evolution applied to account for the motives of indi- 
vidual conduct and the history of social and civil institutions, 
customs, etc. ; the various types of ethics in the phases of 
moral conduct as they are revealed by literature and art." 

Consider that to this work is added what may be called 
the work of the clubs. All the students are members of some 
club or association — musical, like the Beethoven; literary, 
like the Shakespeare, the Phi- Sigma, and the Zeta- Alpha; 
political, like the Agora; or for the study and practice of 
painting or sculpture, like the Art Society. Finally, nearly all 
of them take physical exercise, as it is understood in America 
— that is to say, as a calculated and carefully studied training. 
In the last report of the president I notice six tables of a 
strange description, which reveal in all frankness the tre- 
mendously realistic spirit by which this College, in appear- 
ance so paradoxical, is animated. The first is entitled "Girth 
of Chest." It is a series of comparative columns showing the 
average development of the chest obtained by twenty students, 
taken at random, after five months of training in the gymna- 
sium and on the river. From thirty-one inches these young 
athletes passed to thirty-three. Two parallel columns show at 
a glance the cessation of development of those who have not 
exercised their muscles. The second table gives similarly the 
capacity of the lungs, the third the strength of the arms, the 
fourth the strength of the back, the fifth the depth of the chest, 
the sixth the breadth of the shoulders. 

At first this manner of treating the physiological develop- 
ment of young girls, as trainers might treat that of their 
horses, appears strange. Then you reflect that these young 
girls who come here for instruction, are also destined, for the 
most part, to become wives and mothers. It is, therefore, 
advisable that they should be injured as little as possible by 
cerebral overwork and that their physique^ should remain 



EDUCATION 313 

sound in spite of intellectual effort. That object being ad- 
mitted, the Americans employ the most efficacious method 
simply and quietly. All that remains is to collect statistics of 
the weight of the children to which these young women will 
give birth when married. I seem to hear one of the woman 
doctors who have made those instructive tables answer, " Why 
not?" 

Between a woman's university like Wellesley and a military 
academy like West Point there should be, one would think, 
the same difference which exists with us between the Convent 
of the Sacred Heart, for example, and the School of St. Cyr. 
A priori v^t say to ourselves that one should be strictly watched 
over and the other but little. The Americans think exactly 
the contrary. Accustomed as they are, not to deal in words, 
but to see things as they are, they have said to themselves 
that independence being, in their world, the condition of 
woman's life, the colleges for young girls should accustom 
their students to the practice of independence. Inversely, 
discipline being the essential condition of military life, it 
has seemed to them that a school of officers should be governed 
with very strict severity, and it is for this reason that the 
cadets of West Point have the right to only two months' holi- 
day in their four years of study. It is for this reason also 
that the list of "offences" punishable by bad marks is as 
large at West Point as it is small at Harvard and at Wellesley. 
There are no fewer than eight categories of these. Twelve of 
the first receive ten bad marks each, forty of the second re- 
ceive seven, seventy-six of the third receive five, one hundred 
and five of the fourth receive four, and so until we reach the 
forty-three faults of the eighth category, which receive one 
bad mark each. 

This apparent want of logic in a system which shuts up the 
future soldiers to a discipline such as is applied to children, 



314 OUTRE-MER 

while it leaves the future housewife with unlimited latitude, 
is in truth logical, and, if you wish to trace the ideal portrait 
of the officer of a democratic army, you will find that the 
Americans have succeeded in ascertaining and applying with 
incomparable common sense the laws that apply to formation 
of that personage so abnormal in an essentially pacific and 
commercial republic. 

And, first of all, it is necessary that each officer should be 
deeply, closely attached to the democracy, and that the entire 
corps should be permeated with the democratic spirit. There 
are numerous examples to prove that an army, large or other- 
wise, has always a tendency to insulate itself in the country, 
to detach itself from the nation and to make itself a thing 
apart, and the possibility of a military despotism is always in 
the future. The Americans have foreseen this danger, and 
have warded it off by such a singular method of recruiting 
their military school at West Point that at first sight it dis- 
concerts common sense. On reflection one understands its 
wisdom. They began by absolutely suppressing all compe- 
tition for entrance. Each electoral district which nominates 
a Congressman has a right to name a candidate for a cadet- 
ship, and to that Congressman belongs the right of designat- 
ing the candidate, whom the War Secretary nominates on that 
presentation. Ten places "at large" are added, which the 
President of the United States fills at his will. He reserves 
them, as a rule, for the sons of soldiers or sailors. On this 
list of candidates an entrance examination, or rather one of 
qualification, exercises a kind of weeding out. Is it neces- 
sary to add that politics almost wholly determines the choice 
of Congressmen? Vainly do they try to escape therefrom, as, 
for example, by offering for competition the place of a can- 
didate which they have at their disposal. In fact, one-third 
of those places remain unoccupied, in consequence of the 
deficiencies of the youths whom the Congressmen present. 



EDUCATION 315 

The person from whom I gather these details and those 
which follow, one of the most remarkable officers of our army, 
was astonished on visiting West Point at such an anomaly, 
evidently so harmful to the service. 

"There are in it two advantages," was the reply made to 
him. "In the first place, this recruiting answers to the spirit 
of equality which forms the very foundation of our democracy; 
each district of the country shares the expenses, and it is, 
therefore, right that each should share the benefits. If admis- 
sion to West Point were thrown open to competition, the can- 
didates coming from New England would necessarily beat the 
candidates from the South and West, where the average of 
development is feebler. In the second place, the present 
procedure singles out in the lowest classes, if only as an 
electoral bait, boys who, without this, would otherwise remain 
destitute of instruction. It is a means, among thousands 
of others, of giving the poorest the same facilities of culture 
as the richest. And the statistics of the callings exercised 
by the parents of the pupils testify that the method has suc- 
ceeded. We count since the foundation, eight hundred and 
twenty-seven sons of farmers and planters, four hundred and 
ninety-five sons of merchants, four hundred and fifty-five of 
lawyers, two hundred and seventy-one of doctors, only two 
hundred and forty-six of officers, then the sons of all trades 
— butchers, innkeepers, footmen, detectives, house servants, 
washerwomen. There are many chances that an army com- 
manded by chiefs who to such an extent are the issue of the 
people, will not become an army of pretorians; there are 
great chances also that those ofificers, thus aided by the Re- 
public in the struggle for life, will remain faithful to the Con- 
stitution. The written oath of allegiance which they take on 
their entry to serve the federal power in preference to their 
native State — without doubt as a provision in the case of a 
new war, like that of the North and South — will cost them 



316 OUTRE-MER 

nothing to keep. The United States have done too much 
for them." 

This democratic method of recruiting was, however, not 
without its peril. If the aristocratic officer is a danger to 
liberty, the officer without education is a danger to the army. 
He destroys and dissolves it by his mere existence — at least 
in time of peace, when he is not even placed in a position to 
secure for himself the credit of personal valor. The Ameri- 
cans have well understood this difficulty of origin, if we may 
so say, and they have not overlooked it. Their self-respect 
is too deep for them to accept, without trying to change, a 
too evident inferiority, and they have remedied it, always 
after their habitual method of accepting facts. Which is the 
strongest of the influences that can induce a rather coarse 
youth to control himself, and to train himself in the direction 
of refinement? It is feminine influence. They have there- 
fore asked themselves by what means they could bring woman 
into the life of the cadets, and have bethought themselves of 
constructing a hotel at the doors of the school, in that admir- 
able landscape which is formed by the Hudson and the moun- 
tains — the river with its deep waters flowing at the foot of the 
plateau on which is West Point, and turning round it almost 
at right angles, the mountains spreading themselves out 
behind, their slopes covered with wild forests, and in the 
distance the vast plains where Albany lies. Quite naturally 
the beauty of the site, the comfort of the establishment, the 
facility of access, and the purity of the air attract a great 
number of gentlemen and lady visitors, the principal amuse- 
ment of whom is to watch the cadets going through their exer- 
cises and taking part in the entertainments which they give. 

You arrive. The sound of military music draws you to the 
esplanade. The young pupils of West Point are executing a 
manceuvre in their elegant uniforms of light gray, with a triple 
row of gold buttons. They go and come, while a number of 



EDUCATION 317 

ladies watch them coming and going, and in the intervals of 
the exercise you see them leaving the ranks to salute those 
they know. The grass lawns, shaded with trees and gay with 
flowers, where this parade, at once military and social, takes 
place, give this scene the appearance of a garden party of a 
unique kind. Those same ladies which grace it will be found 
this evening or to-morrow at the dances which the cadets 
themselves organize three times a week in summer and twice 
in winter. 

The observer whom I have already quoted, whose ofiticial 
position prevents me from naming him, thus described one of 
those balls to me : — 

"An invitation was sent to all the visitors at the hotel. I 
took care not to miss it. The entertainment lasted two hours, 
from eight to ten. I was standing in the alcove of the window, 
by the entrance, and, thanks to my incognito, I heard the con- 
versations of the cadets, who came to cool themselves, without 
paying any attention to me. Not a dubious word was uttered. 
The cadets introduced one another to the girls. When one 
of them did not dance a member of the committee wearing a 
red sash, the badge of service, went and fetched a disengaged 
youth and brought him to her. From time to time a cadet 
and a young girl would leave the hall and promenade in the 
dark for ten minutes or so. It seemed quite natural, and no 
one smiled at it. Everything went on with ease and dignity." 

Respect for woman and the refinement caused by that re- 
spect, — these are the means which the Americans have boldly 
employed to make those youths, recruited at random, the 
"gentlemen" that officers must be. Regarding technical in- 
struction they have followed their habitual method, which 
consists in bringing the mind into direct contact with the 
object. Thus they have reduced theoretic teaching to a 
minimum. During three years out of four there is not a 
single class of that kind. Each pupil receives in September, 



318 OUTRE-MER 

the period at which the scholastic year commences, pamphlets 
containing the matters which he must study. He prepares 
these tasks by himself, and then the professor questions him. 
There are eight or ten pupils in a room, with a master who 
knows them all, and who is with them from week to week. 
The exercise regularly done, the youths are enabled each 
evening to apply what they have studied, and thus the abstract 
work of the day is completed. As soon as the fine weather 
comes, that is to say, from the first days of June to the first 
days of September, even the abstract teaching ceases. The 
cadets camp out. It is an object lesson which they receive 
for three months in the open air and under conditions as 
analogous as possible to those which would exist in real war. 
Of their four years at West Point they have, therefore, spent 
one entirely as though they had been with a regiment, but 
in a regiment without promiscuity, without dangerous com- 
panionship, and without the fetters of discipline. With great 
wisdom the "adjutant" has been suppressed at West Point; 
to the future officer he is nothing more than a semi-superior. 
Graded cadets or real officers command with a fulness of 
authority which carries with it at once more rigor and less 
minutige. Thus, though the code of offences is, as we have 
seen, extremely strict, punishments are rare. 

When the question is of those machines for forming a cer- 
tain kind of man, which we call a special school, the result 
gives the measure of the value of the method. With its 
strangely varied recruiting, with its individual education, with 
its instruction, which would appear very commonplace to one 
of the ordinary pupils of our schools, West Point turns out, 
according to the best judges, an excellent corps of student 
officers. Whatever be the arm of the service chosen, the 
young man who leaves the academy must pass through a 
school of application. P)Ut he arrives there sturdy and bal- 



EDUCATION 319 

anced, trained to bodily exercises by gymnastics, fencing, rid- 
ing, and, above all, by camping out in the open air, well 
prepared for a superior education, by the positive apprentice- 
ship which he has served. His teachers have taught him 
nothing which he has not understood. Instead of making 
him, as in many of the military schools of Europe, a scholar, 
whom they will afterward ask to descend into practical details 
of artillery and engineering, they have made him a manipulator 
of cannons and a worker in the trenches, knowing that he can 
become a scholar later, if he have the tastes and aptitudes, 
which, however, is scarcely probable. On the other hand, if 
the United States found it necessary to organize once again an 
immense improvised army as it did thirty-five years ago, they 
would find in the former pupils of this democratic and living 
academy precisely the kind of officers whom they would need 
to put the machine in motion. 

American patriotism has one of its centres in this College, 
the only one in the country which works in the opposite direc- 
tion to universal decentralization, and in the direction of a 
deep federal unity. This displacement of object and method, 
which testifies once again to American adaptability, shows also 
to what a degree these great realists are exempt from the evil 
of doctrines, so pernicious to countries where traditions obtain, 
and how much the servitude of ready-made ideas is repugnant 
to them. Here again you find the great feature of the national 
character, that active will, which holds itself in the face of the 
social world as it will hold itself face to face with the physical 
world, fearless in assertion and in daring. It is the necessary 
rhythm of all effective resolution — the exact "lucidity" of a 
glance over given conditions and their acceptance and adjust- 
ment in view of a no less lucid project. Be it a question of a 
bank, of a bridge, of a railroad, or of a school, American energy 
proceeds always in the same manner. And the success attained 
shows that the procedure is good. 



320 OUTRE-MER 

In the word '* lucidity " we sum up this short inquiry, which 
can evidently be generalized, but only with much reserve. 
Lucidity being the aim, and the means, it is very probable that 
these same characteristics would meet in all the other enter- 
prises of public or private instruction, and in consequence there 
would be that fundamental identity of education and life which 
forms the common foundation of the four groups of instruction, 
of which I have sketched the plan. If you search a Uttle into 
this formula, it seems that many of the quahties and the defects 
of this civilization are illuminated, and also several very deep 
and too little known laws of human nature. And in the first 
place, this identity of education and life explains the prodigious 
development of the whole of this vast country, in which each 
new generation on. reaching maturity has no further apprentice- 
ship to serve. It is a common saying with us, heard even in 
the speeches at the distribution of our prizes, that for collegians 
a second period of education is about to begin with their liberty. 
In fact, a youth of twenty years in France, who has brought his 
literary and scientific studies up to such a point that he is 
enabled to take his degree, is in no way equipped to earn 
his living, still less to make his own fortune or that of his 
family. Quite a new moral and intellectual drill is necessary 
to train him to face the realities of his surroundings. The 
decadence of our secondary education — to speak of nothing 
else — is enormous. In America that decadence does not 
exist. It cannot exist, and the type of the declasse is as 
yet such a stranger to Americans that he is, I think, quite 
incomprehensible to them. When his eighteenth or twentieth 
year has been reached, a man in New York, Boston, or Chicago 
is a made man. He will, without doubt, after fifteen or twenty 
years of struggling, have more experience, a wider scope, and 
a greater authority. But it will be only a difference of degree. 
From the day he leaves school or the university he is complete, 
prepared for the struggle of life. 



EDUCATION 321 

The woman is in the same condition ; and this is why you 
seldom meet in the United States those really young faces, in 
the sense in which we understand the term, those faces in which 
there is uncertainty, something unfinished, a beginning, a mere 
sketch of the individual, who is, as it were, being fashioned 
and modified. 

Age is recognized in the freshness of the skin, the brightness 
of the eyes and the teeth, the growth of the beard, the slender- 
ness of the figure ; and one says, " That young man is not 
twenty- two years of age, that young girl is not twenty years 
old." But the faces of both these young persons are those of 
persons who are thirty or forty years old, and their practical 
activity is just as mature. 

This precocity of initiative is indubitably one of the benefits 
of the method, at least from the social point of view. Another, 
which I have noted in the course of this analysis, is the greater 
elasticity of the local centres, each town raising its future citi- 
zens according to its needs, and, so to say, according to its 
measure. With us a cabinet minister, taking out his watch, 
could tell you what all the rhetoricians in all the academies of 
France were doing at the time. 

In America you have as many systems of education as you 
have towns ; and it is certainly due to this fact that towns quite 
near to one another, such as New York, Boston, Philadelphia, 
and Baltimore, each retain that originality which is so distinct 
and that patriotism which is so separate. Therein lies, for a 
democracy, a condition which is a sine qua non of political 
health; and from that point of view, again, American education, 
by working in the direction of local vitality, shows itself a supe- 
rior machine for producing this healthy state. Democracy is, 
in fact, according to definition, the government of the people 
by the people ; that is to say, it is the empire of the majority. 
In centrahzed countries the power which such a majority gives 
to its representatives is too great, too absolute. They are 

Y 



322 OUTRE-MER 

capable of penetrating too deeply into individual lite ; and 
past and contemporaneous history proves that in fact they 
have always so penetrated, and that republics thus established 
are Csesarisms of long or short duration, but always Csesarisms. 

The tyrann)' of a ministry two months in power, or that of 
an emperor who reigns eighteen years, is always a tyranny. 
One of the greatest thinkers of France at the present moment, 
and one of the least known, M. Louis Menard, has given its 
formula in the following admirable aphorism : " A centrahzed 
republic is not capable of living. Monarchy is the only logical 
form of unity." 

The federative system, which tends always to scatter the 
power .of the local authorities, has the advantage of giving to 
the individual a far larger number of probabihties of inde- 
pendence and of rendering almost impossible the rise of a 
dictature. If the organization of socialism continues to extend 
in the United States, as is very probable, one of the surest 
obstacles to its despotism — for the fact that it is collective 
does not render its despotism any less hateful or iniquitous — 
will be the vigor of the municipal centres. 

It is, therefore, true to say that among the causes which 
contribute to augment that vigor, and which tend to preserve 
the country from revolution from below, as well as from subju- 
gation from above, the school, such as it is understood in 
America, represents perhaps the most powerful. 

It is a conservative force, upon which the country will lean 
in the day of danger ; and as the government of America is 
at one and the same time an instrument of progress and con- 
servatism, we can say that this is one of the most wonderful 
machines of this country which has invented so many. 

There are, however, in this system of education some very 
serious inconveniences, which are to be recognized in the most 
conspicuous defects of that society. \\'ords fail to express 
them well, so deficient in certain delicate shades is the psycho- 



EDUCATION 323 

logical vocabulary, made, as it is, for common use and observa- 
tion. For want of more intelligible words I will say that this 
education does not give a large enough place to the uncon- 
scious. It is too precise, too positive, too clear. It lacks 
uncertainty and, to put it in a word, it is too utilitarian. The 
result is that this immense civilization has the appearance of 
having been manufactured, of being maintained by an effort — 
in fact, of working after the manner of a machine continuingly 
wound up. We do not feel instinct enough, the almost invol- 
untary expansion of a force which ignores itself. It is a 
strange thing that this country, in which everything is done by 
the people and for the people, has none of the characteristics 
which we are accustomed to consider as the mark proper of 
the popular soul. Nciivcte and timidity, clumsiness and credu- 
lous simplicity, are never found in this civilization. It seems 
to have no undercurrent, nothing taken for granted, for the 
reason that everything is actual, realized, and grown up. This 
is why, in spite of that immense culture, and what is better still, 
that appetite for culture, there is as yet no purely American 
art, no purely American literature, no purely American poetry. 
The great artists, the great men of literature, and the great 
poets in the United States — their names are known — remain 
exceptional and solitary. They do not form part of the na- 
tional life, precisely because that life is too voluntary, too self- 
conscious, too intense, and education is constantly at work 
rendering still more intense that self-consciousness and that 
will. 

Looking into it more deeply we recognize that in this the 
Americans illustrate one of the most inevitable yet most un- 
looked-for consequences of the democratic idea. With all 
nations, poetry, to take that word in its broadest sense, has 
always drawn its sap from the hearts of the people. What a 
Homer, an ^schylus, a Virgil, a Dante, and a Shakespeare 
express is the ideal elaborated during centuries by the ignorant 



324 OUTRE-MER 

and the illiterate, by sufiferers too, by the great unknown crowd 
of workers ; by artists and soldiers, laborers and sailors, country 
women and women of the suburbs. Giotto painting his 
frescoes, Michael Angelo carving his marbles, were sustained 
by an obscure Italy beneath them, which did not know itself, 
which did not understand itself, but which had a distant 
glimpse of the unattainable, a far-away and vague ideal. It is 
the " mystery " enveloped in that unconscious life of the peo- 
ple, which completes itself and takes form in the consciousness 
of these great men — mystery made up of misfortunes and 
errors, of blind efforts and baffled ardor. 

There is a deal of individual suffering, of defeated aspira- 
tions, an immense and tragic failure of countless life-histories 
in that embodiment of a shade of feeling, sublime or delicate, 
tragic or touching, which we call a work of art. Those suffer- 
ings, those failures, that ignorance, are just what democracy is 
striving to do away with in the world. It desires that all should 
have their part in the joy of living, of understanding, of express- 
ing themselves. It is a legitimate, a generous ambition, but it 
seems irreconcilable with the development of a certain idealism 
which is but the revenge of the mutilated desires of a race. 
Nemesis, the goddess of fatal compensations, is found here 
again, as in all phases of human life. When we try to define 
the intelligence too closely we mutilate it. When we limit 
facts too severely, restrict them too much, handle them too 
learnedly, we identify ourselves too much with them, and the 
power of pure thought is by so much diminished. Purposing 
too strongly, we destroy in ourselves instinct and replace it by 
mechanism. Making instruction and education too general, 
we interfere with the deep sources of the soul of the people, 
whose reserves of unconscious poetry form the mystic aliment 
of the future masterpieces of art and letters. If American 
civilization has up to now lacked that aesthetic geniality, it cer- 
tainly seems that the fault of it lies here, and that by one of 



EDUCATION 325 

those ironies in which nature deUghts, this colossal effort at self- 
cultivation, this fever of education, account for a great deal of 
it. The future, however, may give a denial to this hypothesis. 

The Americans have the right to say that they have at least 
realized, through a most beneficent audacity, the most legitimate 
purpose of democracy, the indefinite multiplication of the 
chances of well-being and education. A Cambridge professor 
expressed this in a touching manner one afternoon when we 
were in his library looking at the engravings of the "Job" of 
William Blake, the remarkable painter-poet, the precursor of 
Rossetti and of Morris. Outside the snow was falling over the 
pines, with their black boughs, and over the bare branches of 
the other trees. Around us a score of scattered engravings and 
as many pictures brought dear, sunny Italy into that dim and 
silent Northern corner. My host had just expressed to me in 
the presence of those objects — silent witnesses of past years of 
travel — his longing for a land of beauty, where there are fewer 
machines, fewer factories, fewer newspapers, fewer schools, but 
touches of art everywhere, and everywhere traces of that innate 
poetry which you find on a sunlit morning on a quay in Florence, 
on a street in Pisa, at a turning of a road in Sienna. 

"And yet," he said, " I would not be ungrateful to my coun- 
try. I meet with many things which shock me." (He em- 
ployed the more delicate expression, " which are offensive to 
me.") " But in return I feel that a great number of people 
are well off. I think that on this immense continent there are 
few lives which have been absolute failures. That is an incon- 
testable benefit of our democracy, and it is well worth while to 
accept all its conditions." 



VIII 
AMERICAN PLEASURES 

Having exaggerated his nervous and voluntary tension to the 
pitch of abuse, almost to vice, it is impossible that the Ameri- 
can should amuse himself as we Latins do, who hardly conceive 
of pleasure without a certain relaxation of the senses, mingled 
with softness and luxury. The human animal remains the 
same in those manifestations which are apparently most 
opposed, and in our amusements we merely extend that 
which makes the ordinary foundation of our life. The anec- 
dote of Napoleon at St. Helena has often been quoted — that 
he could not sit down at the whist table without at once trying 
to win a rubber. With the cards in his hand he was once more 
the audacious and reckless player who said one day, " The prince 
was in me, in my indomitable spirit, which, in its ascendency, 
put all Europe at my feet. The chances of destiny, it is true, 
placed me on the throne. But even in a cloister I should have 
always been the Emperor." He was so still, in the unconscious 
fever of domination which impelled him to take all the tricks 
on the pitiful green cloth of his house of exile. It is the 
symbol of pleasure of all people and in all races. 

This profound unity of national character is not recognized 
at the first glance, but a little analysis quickly reveals it. In 
France, for example, the dominant feature of national char- 
acter appears to be excessive sociability. It began by creating 
among us the misuse of drawing-room life, and consequently 
the misuse of conversation, and then the taste for subtle, in- 
genious, and abstract ideas. An entire modification of political 

326 



AMERICAN PLEASURES 527 

spirit followed, and, through the sad bankruptcy of 1 789, arose 
a system founded on pure logic, in which the State devours all 
the living force of the country, absorbs all its individuals, and 
exhausts its impulse to action. As a result of this same excess 
of sociability we lind a very low order of popular amusements 
and a habit of lounging in the caf^s, which is so striking to one 
arriving from an Anglo-Saxon country, and the privation of 
which was for Valles the most insupportable form of his exile 
in London. This same taste for sociability makes us like theatri- 
cal pieces which are light, flimsy, and easy to understand, and 
which touch in an easy and clever way upon the manners 
of the day and the petty social follies which have already been 
commented upon in the conversations of drawing-room and 
clubs. This sociability is found again in our better newspapers, 
filled with chatty Hterature, if we may so call it ; in our popular 
fetes, with their open-air balls and their gossiping familiarity, 
and at another pole, in our conception of gallantry. 

The " woman of the town " with us is not only the paid 
creature who ministers to the lewdness of man. If only she 
is in the least witty, graceful, and lively, she very soon becomes 
the comrade in whose company the man lingers with pleasure, 
whom, if he is free, he installs in his home, and whom he will 
end by marrying. All these phenomena, taken together, reveal 
the close and secret tie which binds them to one another. 

An essayist, knowing the United States thoroughly, would 
have no trouble in establishing a similar co-relation between 
American ideas, labors, and pleasures. Their pleasures seem, 
in fact, to imply, like their ideas and their labors, something 
unrestrained and immoderate, a very vigorous excitement, 
always bordering on violence, or, rather, on roughness and 
restlessness. Even in his diversions the American is too active 
and too self-willed. Unlike the Latin, who amuses himself by 
relaxation, he amuses himself by intensity, and this is the case 
whatever be the nature of his amusements, for he has very 



328 OUTRE-MER 

coarse and very refined ones. But a few sketches from nature 
will explain better than all the theories that kind of nervousness, 
and, as it were, fitful sharpness in amusement, if we can here 
use that word which is synonymous with two of the least 
American things in the world, — unconstraint and repose. 

The most vehement of those pleasures and the most deeply 
national are those of sport. Interpret the word in its true sense, 
and you will find in it nothing of the meaning which we French 
attach to it, who have softened the term in adopting it, and 
who make it consist above all of elegance and dexterity. For 
the American, " sport " has ever in it some danger, for it does 
not exist without the conception of contest and daring. Thus 
with yachting, which to us means pleasure cruises along the 
coasts, means to him voyages around the world, braving the 
tempest and the vast solitudes of the Atlantic, or else rivalries 
of speed in which everything is taken into consideration except 
human life. While I was visiting one of the private yachts at 
Newport at anchor in the harbor, I noticed an entire arsenal of 
guns and pikes hanging in one of the state-rooms between decks. 
" It is in case we should go into Chinese seas and should meet 
pirates," said the proprietor of this dainty travelling toy. An- 
other, discussing before me the probabilities of speed between 
the Vigilant and Valkyrie, two sailing yachts whose names were 
fur weeks last autumn the subject of every conversation, said, 
coolly, " We had to make the bulwark too low ; we shall be 
lucky if we do not lose several men." There was no more 
emotion in that statement than vain boasting in the other. It 
was the natural expression of an energy that instinctively likes to 
associate the idea of a play with that of a peril, and to which 
a little tragic risk is as the necessary condiment to its most 
innocent festivities. 

Among the distractions of sport, none has been more fashion- 
able for several years past than football. I was present last 
autumn, in the peaceful and quiet city of Cambridge, at a 



AMERICAN PLEASURES 329 

game between the champions of Harvard College — the " team," 
as they say here — and the champions of the University of 
Pennsylvania. I must go back in thought to my journey in 
Spain to recall a popular fever equal to that which throbbed 
along the road between Boston and the arena where the match 
was to take place. The electric cars followed one another at 
intervals of a minute, filled with passengers, who, seated or 
standing, or hanging on the steps, crowded, pushed, crushed 
one another. Although the days of November are cruelly cold 
under a Massachusetts sky, the place of contest, as at Rome for 
the gladiatorial combats, was in a sort of open-air enclosure. 
A stone's throw away from Memorial Hall and the other build- 
ings of the University, wooden stands were erected. On these 
stands were perhaps fifteen thousand spectators, and in the 
immense quadrilateral hemmed in by the stands were two 
teams composed of eleven youths each waiting for the signal 
to begin. 

What a tremor in that crowd, composed not of the lower 
classes, but of well-to-do people, and how the excitement in- 
creased as time went on ! All held in their hands small, 
red flags and wore tufts of red flowers. Crimson is the color of 
the Harvard boys. Although a movement of feverish excite- 
ment ran through this crowd, it was not enough for the enthusi- 
asts of the game. Propagators of enthusiasm, students with 
unbearded, deeply-lined faces, passed between the benches 
and still further increased the ardor of the pubUc by uttering 
the war-cry of the University, the "Rah! rah! rah!" thrice 
repeated, which terminates in the frenzied call, '•' Haaar-vard." 
The partisans of the " Pennsy's " replied by a similar cry, and in 
the distance, above the pahngs of the enclosure, we could see 
clusters of other spectators, too poor to pay the entrance fee, 
who had climbed into the branches of the leafless trees, their 
faces outlined against the autumn sky with the daintiness of 
the pale heads in Japanese painted fans. 



330 OUTRE-MER 

The signal is given and the play begins. It is a fearful game, 
which by itself would suffice to indicate the differences between 
the Anglo-Saxon and the Latin world — a game of young bull- 
dogs brought up to bite, to rush upon the quarry ; the game 
of a race made for wild attack, for violent defence, for implacable 
conquests and desperate struggles. With their leather vests, 
with the Harvard sleeves of red cloth, and the Pennsylvania 
blue and white vests and sleeves, so soon to be torn — with the 
leather gaiters to protect their shins, with their great shoes and 
their long hair floating around their pale and flushed faces, 
these scholarly athletes are at once admirable and frightful to see 
when once the demon of contest has entered into them. At 
each extremity of the field is a goal, representing, at the right 
end, one of the teams, at the left the other. The entire object 
is to throw an enormous leather ball, which the champion of 
one or the other side holds in turn. It is in waiting for this 
throw that all the excitement of this almost ferocious amuse- 
ment is concentrated. He who holds the ball is there, bent 
forward, his companions and his adversaries likewise bent down 
around him in the attitude of beasts of prey about to spring. 
All of a sudden he runs to throw the ball, or else with a wildly 
rapid movement he hands it to another, who rushes off" with it. 
All depends on stopping him. 

The roughness with which they seize the bearer of the ball 
is impossible to imagine without having witnessed it. He is 
grasped by the middle of the body, by the head, by the legs, by 
the feet. He rolls over and his assailants with him, and as they 
fight for the ball and the two sides come to the rescue, it be- 
comes a heap of twenty-two bodies tumbling on top of one 
another, like an inextricable knot of serpents with human heads. 
This heap writhes on the ground and tugs at itself. One sees 
faces, hair, backs, or legs appearing in a monstrous and agitated 
melee. Then this murderous knot unravels itself and the ball, 
thrown by the most agile, bounds away and is again followed 



AMERICAN PLEASURES 331 

with the same fury. It continually happens that, after one of 
those frenzied entanglements, one of the combatants remains 
on the field motionless, incapable of rising, so much has he 
been hit, pressed, crushed, thumped. 

A doctor whose duty it is to look after the wounded arrives 
and examines him. You see those skilled hands shaking a 
foot, a leg, rubbing the sides, washing a face, sponging the 
blood which streams from the forehead, the eyes, the nose, 
the mouth. A compassionate comrade assists in the business 
and takes the head of the fainting champion on his knee. 
Sometimes the unlucky player must be carried away. More 
frequently, however, he recovers his senses, stretches himself, 
rouses up, and ends by scrambling to his feet. He makes a 
few steps, leaning on the friendly shoulder, and no sooner is he 
able to walk than the game begins afresh, and he joins in again 
with a rage doubled by pain and humiliation. 

If the roughness of this terrible sport was for the spectators 
only the occasion of a nervous excitement of a few hours, the 
young athletes would not give themselves up to it with this 
enthusiasm which makes them accept the most painful, some- 
times the most dangerous, of trainings. A mother said to me, 
speaking of her son, who is not fourteen years old : " He 
adores football. He is already captain of his eleven. I should 
not be anxious if he never played against any but little gentle- 
men, but they have a mania for playing against common people. 
It is in such struggles that dangerous accidents are always 
to be feared." "What will you have?" replied one of the 
professors of Harvard. " In the frenzy of the game they deal 
each other some hard blows, it is true, and it is true, above all, 
that the heroes of matches Hke that of to-day are victims. 
The training is too intense. The nervous system cannot bear 
up against it. But the feats of the champions keep the game 
fashionable. Hence all the small boys in the remotest parts of 
America take up this exercise, and thus athletes are formed." 



332 OUTRE-MER 



^ 



He was putting into abstract form that which is the instinct of 
the American crowd, an instinct which does not reason and 
which shows itself in very strange ways. During the contest, 
which I have attempted to describe, I heard a distinguished 
and refined woman, next to whom I was seated, crying out, 
" Beauty ! " at the sight of rushes that sent five or six boys 
sprawling on the ground. 

No sooner are such matches as these in preparation than the 
portraits of the various players are in all the papers. The 
incidents of the game are described in detail with graphic pict- 
ures, in order that the comings and goings of the ball may be 
better followed. Conquerors and conquered are alike inter- 
viewed. From a celebrated periodical the other day I cut out 
an article signed "A Football Scientist," wherein the author 
sought to show that the right tactics to follow in this game were 
the same as those used by Napoleon. What can be added to 
this eulogium, when we know the peculiar position occupied by 
Napoleon in the imagination of the Yankees? 

It must not be thought that such intense enthusiasm for so 
brutal a sport does not often arouse strong opposition. The 
same spirit of initiative which urges entire crowds of Ameri- 
cans to bow down in front of these semi-gladiators and to 
idolize this violent display of physical energy drives other 
Americans to raise a campaign against this uncontrolled and 
uncontrollable violence. Leagues have been formed in favor 
of and against the game. It is very possible that too numer- 
ous accidents will cause certain States to pass legislative re- 
strictions against the terrible game. When one has closely 
followed a really ardent game, "with plenty of life and gin- 
ger," as the reporter of a newspaper said, one can notice that 
at a certain point of excitement the players are no longer 
masters of themselves. As I write these lines I see once more 
the figure of one of the champions of Pennsylvania after a dis- 
puted point and the gesture of rage with which he threw the 



AMERICAN PLEASURES 333 

ball which he had to give up. Between that display of anger 
and a bad action there was too little distance, too little psycho- 
logical breadth — to employ a pedantic and very exact scien- 
tific formula. 

However, such restrictions will no more cure the American 
public of the passion for football than they have cured them 
of the passion for boxing. When, last winter, Corbett and 
Mitchell were to meet at Jacksonville, it was necessary to run 
special trains to carry the partisans of one and the other boxer 
to that fortunate city of Florida. There was not a newspaper 
in which the physical condition of the two rivals was not men- 
tioned morning after morning, hour after hour. The names 
of the relatives and friends who assisted them, the furniture 
of the hotel rooms in which they resided, the menu of their 
meals, their reading and their thoughts — what details did 
one not find in the columns of the newspapers! When I 
went to Jacksonville a few weeks later, the fight was still the 
subject of every conversation in the trains which ran through 
the pretty little town, and people only stopped speaking of it 
in order to discuss the next fight, which was proposed between 
the Californian champion and Jackson, of Australia. Even 
the election of the future President will not excite more popu- 
lar feeling. 

To obtain an idea of what such encounters must be, these 
"prize fights," as they are called, wherein the fight only ends 
when it becomes impossible for one of the boxers to continue 
it, one must witness some contest regulated by an athletic 
club, that is to say, in which the rounds are counted and the 
blows are limited. The most interesting among those, the 
details of which I followed, took place in Washington. It 
was also the first at which I was present. 

On the third floor of the club, in the gymnasium, a platform 
was built at the height of a man's head, closed in with ropes. 
All around a thousand spectators were waiting, some seated 



334 OUTRE-MER 

on chairs, others standing in the gallery. Along the walls were 
hung gymnastic implements, giving the scene a most appro- 
priate framing. The electricity — it was nine o'clock in the 
evening — lighted and chiselled the outlines of the impatient 
faces of the votaries, and on the square platform a man was 
nervously pacing up and down, the "referee," the arbiter of 
the fight. He wore one of those jackets that are made here 
which exaggerate the fashion and have a cut so ample, so 
round, that it makes them resemble the shell of some vast 
coleoptera. At last a murmur of satisfaction rises. The first 
two boxers arrive with their trainers. They are covered with 
big bath-cloaks, which they cast aside as soon as they get upon 
the platform, and their bodies appear quite naked, thin, and 
with knobs of muscles. They seat themselves upon chairs and 
give themselves over with a singular passiveness to the care of 
their trainers, who wash them, comb them, rub them like ani- 
mals, while the personage clothed in the ample jacket an- 
nounces the order of the fight, its duration, the number of 
rounds, the weight of the champions, their names and their 
country. 

One is from Philadelphia and the other from Wilmington. 
The first shows a black face, almost that of a mulatto, in the 
centre of which is flattened out a broken and crooked nose. 
The other is fair, with a square face, the nose also broken in 
two places, making a mark on his face somewhat resembling 
a death's head. He has extended his two arms, which he 
rests on the two cords crossed behind him at an acute angle. 
His muscles of marble gleam under the massage, which does 
not even seem to move them. At last the toilette is finished. 
Both men draw on their gloves. A gong sounds. They rise, 
walk toward one another, shake hands, and the contest com- 
mences. A sort of gurgle of pleasure escapes from the audi- 
ence, an interrupted gurgle which will change by and by from 
a sigh to a howl, as the fight becomes brisk or quiet. The 



AMERICAN PLEASURES 335 

Philadelphian attacks with more vigor than his opponent, but 
he is too nervous. His legs do not keep their balance. He 
dances and hops, his arm moving in a mechanical and irreso- 
lute manner, like a pair of hesitating pincers, advancing, 
retiring, then advancing again, indefinitely. His adversary 
has a better guard. He advances, he retires without moving 
his body, and his cruel face, in which his eyes gleam, as it 
were, from two blue hollows, is really like that of death. The 
blows fall more heavily as the fight progresses. The bodies 
bend to avoid them. The two men are furious. One hears 
their breathing and the dull thud of the fists as they fall on 
the naked flesh. After several blows of harder delivery, the 
''claret" is drawn, as they say, the blood flows from the eyes, 
the nose, the ears, it smears the cheeks and the mouth, it 
stains the fists with its warm and red flow, while the public 
expresses its delight by howls, which the striking of the gong 
alone stops. 

It is the pause between two rounds. The boxers, again 
seated, give themselves up, as before, to the care of their 
trainers, who rub them like ostlers grooming a horse. The 
seconds spring upon the platform, taking off their coats, and, 
once in their shirt sleeves, begin to fan the unfortunate pugil- 
ists, who are half faint from loss of blood, from blows re- 
ceived and given, and from the intense nervous effort of the 
fight. Another sound of the gong and the next round begins. 

There were four such fights that evening, one of six rounds, 
the second of eight, the third of five, the last of eleven, and 
during the two hours and a half that this terrible scene con- 
tinued not a spectator left his place. Not for a second did 
the passionate interest, which fixed every face on the ring, 
seem to be suspended. Scarce was a protest raised, when, on 
the referee calling for the champions of the third contest, two 
lads of sixteen appeared, the one broad-shouldered and lithe, 
the other so meagre and slight of body, poorly developed and 



336 OUTRE-MER 

fragile. A voice cried, "They are girls, not boys! " but that 
did not prevent frenzied applause when the thin, undeveloped 
boy was struck down at full length, the blood dripping from 
his boyish face. 

Merely time enough to carry him away, and another duel 
began, this time between two old boxers, who seemed the 
incarnation of two physical types; the one short and heavy, 
almost fat, with red hair, the blood on the surface of his too 
white skin; the other lank and very tall, all gall and nerve. 
The sinister face of the latter, green under the blue of a 
shaved beard, with the sly eyes of a tricky servant, relaxed in 
a ferocious smile. I saw him towering above the other, tower- 
ing above us all, while the agile and vehement precision of 
his movements gave the idea of an invincible energy. After 
eleven rounds, this olive-colored athlete was as dry as when 
he put foot on the platform, while sweat, mingled with blood, 
flowed from his adversary. It was a series of surprising 
attacks and returns no less surprising, and when the two 
champions had completed the eleventh round without either 
having been ''knocked out," there ran through the assembly 
an irresistible stir of sympathy for the feebler fighter, for the 
short one who had defended himself with so much pluck. To 
the giant was awarded the victory with loud acclamations; and 
in the handshakings given to the other, there was admiration 
and friendship. The vanquished but courageous fighter might 
have asked anything of those men and they would have given 
it to him, so greatly did they respect him for having so well 
held an impossible position. 

This term of "respect," applied to professional boxers, will 
seem very strange, and yet it is the only one which describes 
the prestige with which those heroes of pugilism are sur- 
rounded in the United States. One of my lady friends here, 
to whom I spoke of this enthusiasm, told me that she owed 
her life to one of the most famous boxers of the West, and 



AMERICAN PLEASURES 337 

under circumstances so singular that it is worth while to report 
them in detail. She had dined and spent the evening in one 
of the suburbs of the large town, which was then her home, 
and was returning in her carriage when she had to cross a 
street which was full of dangerous characters. She had fallen 
into the turmoil of a monster demonstration after a prolonged 
and unfortunate strike. Her horses were compelled to stop. 
She put her head through the window out of curiosity, and an 
overwhelming clamor at once saluted her appearance. The 
gleam of electricity which lighted the streets had just struck 
on some large diamonds which sparkled in her hair. This 
sign of luxury, added to the aspect of the brougham, the livery 
of the coachman and the footman, and the turnout of the 
whole establishment, raised the indignation of this famished 
crowd. Fists were extended, faces approached with insulting 
words. "I had taken a long gold pin," said the young 
woman, " and I was resolved to strike at the eye of the first 
one who came too near." 

At that moment, when she believed herself to be in extreme 
danger, having only so feeble a weapon, she saw with terror a 
colossal form break through the ranks of the crowd, pushing 
people aside with so much authority that she took him for 
one of their chiefs. " Don't be frightened at those foolish 
people," said the man when he was near her, "I will see to 
it. Tell your coachman to drive on." The young woman 
once again leaned out of the window, but this time the ter- 
rible shout was not raised, and she gave her orders to her ser- 
vants, who sat motionless on the box, overcome with fright. 
The brougham started, escorted by the unknown, who simply 
rested his hand on the ledge of the window, the crowd separat- 
ing to let the equipage pass. Once beyond the strikers, the 
unknown saluted the lady. The coachman whipped up his 
horses and started off at full speed. The footman was still 
trembling all over as they reached the door of the house. 



338 OUTRE-MER 



1 



"You may imagine that I was anxious to know by whom I 
had been saved," she continued, "but the two servants were 
Irishmen, who had just arrived from Europe, and knew 
nobody. The description which I gave to some of my friends 
who were acquainted with the personal appearance of the 
leaders of the strike did not answer to any of them. I had, 
therefore, given up the hope of knowing the name of my mys- 
terious protector whom in fancy I saw continually, with his thin 
face, haughty and martial, his domineering look and the ease, 
at once strong and supple, of his movements. 

" But fancy, seven or eight weeks later, as my mother and I 
were in a shop buying furs, a disturbance broke out at the door. 
I saw my coachman off his seat and one of my horses on the 
ground, and a man, totally drunk, fighting with the poHce. 
I recognized my rescuer, and at the same time learned his 
name and the wild exploit which he had just accomphshed. 

It was John M. V , the celebrated boxer, who, under the 

influence of alcohol, had bet that he would fell a horse with his 
fist. Chance had it that this absurd wager brought him in front 
of this store, and that he just happened to strike one of my 
horses. I was able to acquit myself, at all events to a certain 
extent, of my debt toward him by preventing them from pros- 
ecuting him for his act, although there was little risk of his 
being rigorously dealt with. He was too popular." 

Beside the pleasures of sport we must place those of the 
theatre. The two are not so far apart as might at first sight 
appear. A passion for the play which results in respect for the 
actors is general among the Americans, and we know what recep- 
tion Mme. Sarah Bernhardt, Mme. Eleonora Duse, M. Coquelin, 
and Mr. Irving have had among them — to mention only the 
names of four famous artists, and not to speak of singers. Not 
only the playing of these great actors interested the public, but 
also their personality, and, above all, their ideas about art. 



AMERICAN PLEASURES 339 

In every town in the United States there is a group of 
amateurs whose study and dehght it is to discuss the more 
or less inteUigent rendering of such and such a play or musical 
work. I have said study, for even here the evidence of purpose 
is visible. At Boston, for instance, you will find that the pro- 
grammes of each of the celebrated concerts is accompanied by 
a technical commentary, so accurate, so lucid, and at the same 
time so erudite, that the pamphlet is in truth a chapter in the 
study of musical history. At Chicago, when Coquelin was giv- 
ing the representation of Tartufe, of which I have spoken, 
the newspapers of the following day contained dissertations on 
Moliere's comedy which were as scholarly, as analytic and as 
critical as could have been the feuilleion of the Temps or the 
Journal des Debafs. And yet, besides these evidences of a 
fastidious taste and a superior dilettantism, you find this same 
public accepting the most astonishing oddities. 

I remember a gala night at the opera in New York, when 
the music was sung by one of the actors in German and by 
another in French, while the chorus replied in Italian, and no 
English was heard. But is there not a secret harmony between 
such apparently contradictory manifestations? If you go to 
the theatre for pleasure, if you are a voluptuary of music and 
an epicure of harmony, such things shock and annoy you. All 
your enthusiasm cools in that displeasure, and you have the 
uncontrollable desire to take up your hat and walk out. But 
if you are conscious that you are studying the genius of a 
master or the talent of an artist, you accept the performance, 
though mutilated. You accept it, above all, if you are devoured 
with that need of European assimilation which takes possession 
of intellectual America not less than fashionable America. Not 
being able to have the whole opera and all the Com^die Fran- 
^aise from the other side of the ocean, these people take what 
they can — the very best, it must be acknowledged — and they 
enjoy it, as the Enghsh can enjoy the frieze of the Parthenon, 



340 OUTRE-MER 

which is in broken fragments and without cohesion. But their 
double passion is satisfied, — that, in the first place, of cultivating 
themselves, and, second, of having all the best actors of London 
and Paris in New York, 

We must look for the original American genius and the true 
dramatic pleasure of the people in performances of quite a 
different kind. The play which the authors of this country 
excel in writing and the actors in playing is a kind of comedy, 
almost without affectation and intrigue, entirely composed of 
local scenes and customs, and mixed with pantomime. If the 
now antiquated expression, " a section of life,'* could ever have 
been applied to plays, it may be to these. They show all the 
peculiarities of the different States, — sometimes the singular 
customs of the South, as in the Nezv South, which I have 
already analyzed ; at other times those of the West, as in In 
Mizzoura, or those of the North, as in a play called A Tem- 
perance Town, which I saw in New York. In the sub-title of 
this last play — the most typical, perhaps, of all — we are told 
that it " is intended as a more or less truthful presentation of 
certain incidents of life relating to the sale and use of liquor 
in a small village in a prohibition State." The great curiosity 
aroused by this comedy lies in the fact that the sympathetic 
personage is a drunkard. 

" Is it worth while to destroy the abuse of drink in order to 
install the triumph of hypocrisy?" asks one of the heroes in 
the last act. Therein lies all the moral of this singular work, 
in which, besides pathetic scenes, almost melodramatic buffoon- 
eries of this kind are to be found. It is Christmas night. The 
daughter of the minister, expelled by her father, is dragging 
herself along the walls of the church in which her father is 
preaching. Meanwhile a facetious drunkard places, on the 
steps of the church, a large plank covered with snow, over 
which, one after the other, all the members of the congrega- 
tion fall as they come out. It is in such extraordinary contrasts 



AMERICAN PLEASURES 341 

as these that the public seems to take wild delight. Laughter 
is not, as with us, excited by the witty and somewhat free joke 
with double meaning. It is cold-blooded and totally unex- 
pected drollery which excites it. All of a sudden and in a 
tragic moment, one of the artists accomplishes a clown trick. 
He raises the hat from the head of his interlocutor with a kick, 
as he performs a dangerous jump over a table. Then the scene 
continues, these extravagances having done nothing more than 
raise the wild laughter of the audience. To the eyes of the 
stranger, unaccustomed to this mosaic out of real life, scenes 
of local customs and of extravagant gambols, this epileptic 
gayety savors of the bar, of the intoxication of alcohol, and of 
incipient madness. 

The oddest thing is that these players, who are in a measure 
gymnasts and clowns, are extraordinary in the accurate sim- 
plicity and realism of the serious portions of their parts. In 
one of these comedies, which was called, I think, The Coun- 
try Circus, I witnessed a scene of theft acted with incompar- 
able perfection by three chance performers. One represented 
the manager of the circus at his ticket ofifice, the second was a 
negro asking for a ticket at that office, the third was a police- 
man guarding the entrance to the theatre. The negro gave a 
ten-dollar bill to the manager, who returned him only five dol- 
lars' change. The negro complained. The manager bent over 
toward the opening, cried, " Officer ! " and accused his victim 
of theft, upon which the policeman collared the poor black, 
and pushed him by force into the circus. Then, having 
returned to the ticket office, he received two dollars from the 
manager. The startled passivity of the negro, the cutting 
banter of the Barnum, who was " letting him in," the brutal 
and sordid duplicity of the policeman — the features were 
marked as in an etching, the pantomime was rendered almost 
intolerable by its truthfulness. 

The negro and the policeman are, moreover, two of the fa- 



342 OUTRE-MER 

vorite personages of the really popular farces ; another is the 
chivalrous blackguard, whom I have already outlined. But the 
unrivalled character is the " tramp," the professional vagabond, 
in the toils of his two enemies, the policeman and the brake- 
man. The struggle around a freight car, wherein the tramp 
wishes to have a seat, or whence the brakeman expels him, is 
the unfailing theme which lends itself to all sorts of tricks and 
jokes. The tramp is, in fact, the great popular humorist. It 
is he who gives their nicknames to the railroad companies, who, 
for instance, baptizes the Baltimore and Ohio, the " B. and O., " 
"Beefsteak and Onions." In one of the theatres in Washing- 
ton I have known an audience rise in wild laughter at that joke. 
The large box in front of the stage, one of the only four in the 
hall, was occupied that night by a spectator who had placed his 
feet on the velvet of the balustrade, and of whom one saw 
nothing but the patent leather of his boots shining beneath the 
electric light, and his swinging hand, a big, hairy hand, loaded 
with rings. He manifested his delight by knocking his heels 
against the red velvet, which served him as a support in his 
comfortable position. Probably this man, who must have paid 
fifteen dollars for his box, was one of those newly enriched 
Westerners, who have tried twenty vocations, have made a fort- 
une several times, and have kept company during their advent- 
urous existence with people of all classes and of all descriptions. 
Such individuals, and they constitute the foundation of the 
American public, have too complete an experience of human 
life not to expect exact observation in a comedy, and real 
pictures of manners. On the other hand, though often without 
scruple, they have retained, through their Odyssey of business, 
a certain youthful, almost infantine, naivete, which is traceable 
everywhere here. They are, besides, honest enough, and even 
scrupulous in questions of love. 

These local studies, interlarded with buffooneries, from which 
all obscenity is eliminated, correspond to these various features. 



AMERICAN PLEASURES 343 

And notice that the managers understand it well. Read this 
puff which I copy from a programme : " The actors of this 
troupe propose to act only native plays by native authors and 
this one [follows the title] is essentially American in its scenery, 
in its action, and in its aim. The characters are essentially 
American, and the play breathes everywhere an American fresh- 
ness which is in keeping with the greatness of America. There 
is not in the piece a single bad character, man or woman. Not 
a syllable is uttered which could bring a blush to the most 
modest cheek. This piece attacks the vices of dissipated 
society and the miseries which are the outgrowth of the con- 
centration of civilization in the great towns. No soiled dove 
beats its soiled wings here ; there are no brigands in dress 
clothes flying round in search of prey. ..." All was true in 
this announcement, which was only incomplete on this point, — 
that the piece ended without any reason having been given for 
the exhibition of a family of acrobats. 

I have turned over the leaves of a great number of illustrated 
comic newspapers, those which friends in New York have 
pointed out to me as the best. The Americans dote on these 
publications, which are to be found in all the halls of the hotels, 
in all the railway carriages, and on the club tables. Without 
exaggerating the importance of these pamphlets, we must 
recognize in them, in every country, a certain documentary 
value. They characterize the humor of the race and its delight 
in mockery. Besides, you will find in them a thousand details 
of habits, described off-hand, their exaggeration rendering them 
still more perceptible to the traveller. On running through a 
collection of several numbers of some of these papers, a first 
observation is forced upon one ; namely, the entire absence 
of those nude drawings which form the perverse prettiness of 
similar periodicals in Paris, and the no less remarkable absence 
of allusions to marital misadventures. One might believe, in 
noting this absence, that neither gallantry nor adultery existed 



344 OUTRE-MER 

in the United States, or that, if they exist, it is in such a shadow 
of secrecy that they escape even satire. Do not suppose, how- 
ever, that the caricaturists profess to be particularly prejudiced 
in favor of marriage. But when they see its defects, it is espe- 
cially from the point of view of the budget, as is fitting in the 
country of the "almighty dollar." 

Family Hfe is too costly and the men must work too hard. 
This is their principal grievance. Here, for example, is a 
wedding reception. The drawing-room is full of people who 
are comphmenting the newly married couple and the parents. 
" I congratulate you on the marriage of your daughter," says 
one of the visitors. " I see you are gradually getting all the 
girls off your hands." And the father answers, " The misfort- 
une is that it costs so much to keep their husbands." " Your 
men work too hard in America," said a foreign count to a girl. 
"Yes," she replied, " they have to maintain their titled sons-in- 
law." When it is not the father who works himself to death, it 
is the husband. Here on a Christmas night appears a certain 
Popleigh, aged before his time, thin and bent, his arms full 
of presents, which tell of his numerous family. A gentleman 
wrapped up in a comfortable fur coat, a cigar in his mouth, 
gazes at him sarcastically. " It is Mr. Singleton," says the 
legend, simply, " who was a rejected suitor for the hand of the 
present Mrs. Popleigh." Even aside from the question of 
money, this nation does not seem to believe that an American 
marriage is a very fortunate operation. Listen to this dialogue 
between a husband and his wife. She : " After all, what 
have you at the club, you men, that makes it so attractive to 
you, and which you have not at home?" He: "My dear, 
we have not at the club what we have at home. That is the 
attraction." It is the bankruptcy of the happiness of the man. 
As for the happiness of the woman, she herself does not expect 
it. "Yes," repUes an engaged girl, with her eyes dreamily 
fixed on the skies, " I am very happy. At least, I suppose so. 



AMERICAN PLEASURES 345 

There is but one great bother. Once married, I shall no more 
be able to flirt." 

This mocking remark is but a commentary on a very real 
fact, which I have attempted to explain; namely, the social 
sovereignty of the young girl in the United States, and if a 
thousand little signs had not pointed out that sovereignty to 
the traveller, he would find the proof of it in the caricatures. 
The young girl appears as often in these papers as Lorette in 
the albums of Gavarni, as the fast woman in those of Grdvin 
and as the marcheuse of the opera or the sidewalk in those of 
Forain. As those three great masters have felt the graceful- 
ness of the Parisian woman at three different epochs, so the 
American artist feels with an incomparable delicacy the beauty 
of the young girl of his country. There she is, smiling, 
dreaming, talking, on horseback, alive, in fact, with her fine 
figure, her well-developed shoulders, her daring elegance, her 
white teeth) her eyes wide open on the world — too wide open, 
for they see too clearly. Listen to the conversation which 
the artist attributes to these admirable persons, and you will 
be edified by their intelligence. Here is one of them who 
has seated herself on a deck chair near a young man as beauti- 
ful as herself. With deep emotion, she clasps her hands and 
says, replying to a question which one can guess: "Yes, 
but you are very poor, Tom, and I have no money. With me 
my face is my fortune." 

Another is taking a country walk with an adorer who is say- 
ing with bitterness, " If I were rich you would marry me at 
once." "Ah, George! George!" she replies. "The devo- 
tion which you show me breaks my heart." "What do you 
mean? " "That you have often praised my beauty, but until 
now I did not know how much you recognized my good sense." 
These realistic girls, just as the most realistic men, know 
that marriage is an association where their partner will ask 
them to bring money — a great deal of money. Two of them 



346 OUTRE-MER 

are chatting, doubtless on the Newport landing-stage, for one 
of them wears a yachting-cap, the other a sailor hat with a 
colored ribbon. Vessels are passing out at sea. "I heard 
that your father had sold his yacht?" queries one. "Yes," 
replied her friend; "in these hard times it is a rather heavy 
expense." "Then," replies the indiscreet friend, "the news 
that you are going to be married is doubtless not true." 
Further, the handsome young men, companions and accom- 
plices in the flirting of these pretty children, do not conceal 
from them their interested motives. 

"Would you have loved me had I been poor?" asks one 
of them of a fine young fellow of twenty-two or twenty-three 
years of age, who replies, clasping her to his heart : — 

"Ah, darling! I should not have known you." 

And you do not feel over-indignant at seeing money con- 
stantly mixed up in affairs of the heart. The heart is so little 
in question. The caricaturist takes care to let you know it. 
Engagements which are tied and untied so easily do not enlist 
the hearts of the elegant dolls which the society man and 
girl are. 

"Ah, dear," murmurs a Perdita, raising her beautiful, half- 
veiled eyes, with their long lashes, to the lips of an elegant 
cavalier, "tell me truly how much you love me." 

"You are my favorite betrothed," he replies, seriously, "the 
only one that I love." 

And there are a great many chances that she will see a deli- 
cate flattery in this singular declaration, for she herself does 
not attach a very deep significance to the word "betrothal," 
at least if we are to believe this other dialogue between two 
young girls who are exchanging confidences. 

"They told me that you were in love with him," says one. 

" No, no," replies the other, quickly; " it was not so serious 
as that. We were only engaged ! " 

She has doubtless heard — or he has heard — that the stocks 



AMERICAN PLEASURES 347 

held by his father — or by her father — have gone down con- 
siderably and everything has been broken off. Had they 
acted otherwise, society would have thought them very silly. 

" Do you know that Mr. and Mrs. Brown-Smith must find 
things very amusing? " says Perdita to her friend, Penelope. 

"Why?" 

"Why? Both of them wished to marry for money, and 
neither of them has a cent. They have lots of fun laughing 
at each other." 

"Lots of fun." There is the best summing up, not only 
of the situation, but of all these caricatures. Nothing less 
resembles the sharp and grim acerbity of our own humorists. 
In this chaffing of young girls, which might so easily be cruel, 
there is much jovial good-humor. The same may be said in 
regard to the caricatures of the lower classes — notably, the 
tramps, the negroes, and the Irish. Indeed, poverty is more 
intolerable in the United States than elsewhere, in a climate 
so severe in winter, so burning in summer, and amid crushing 
competition. Listen, however, to this vagabond, whom a 
piece of money, given by a generous passer-by, has enabled 
to enter a bar, where he is standing in front of a free-lunch 
table : — 

"Haven't you eaten enough?" cries the proprietor, over- 
come by the sight of the ham, salted fish, bread and butter, 
and fried oysters disappearing in the abysses of that rag- 
bedecked stomach, 

" Do I look like a man who has eaten enough? " replies the 
vagabond, sneeringly. 

One of his feet is shod with a slipper and a gaiter, the other 
with an elastic boot. A check scarf is bound round his chin 
and protects the swollen cheek, the eye at once insolent, jeer- 
ing, and knavish like himself. This impertinent joke shows the 
tone of the rephes ascribed by the caricaturist to these tramps, 
whom he willingly shows us, one smoking, another reading a 



348 OUTRE-MER 

newspaper with spectacles on his nose. Their idleness amuses 
him without making him indignant, and he does not consider 
it right to characterize them with sinister legends such as 
Gavarni found for his Virelocque. 

Nor does the caricaturist develop the worst and most atro- 
cious features of the negro, — the criminal sensuality, ferocity, 
and perfidy of the former slave. No. He makes merry joy- 
ously over his vanity and his familiarity. He has drawn one, 
for instance, entering his master's room wearing a pair of check 
trousers of the same material as the coat of his master. And 
the latter says to him : — 

" Look here, Tom, I have told you already not to wear on 
week days those trousers that I gave you when I wear the rest 
of the suit." 

And Tom replies : " Why, boss, are you afraid they will 
take us for twins? " 

We can imagine the happy smile which parts the big lips 
that show the jester's white teeth. He is about to say, as one 
of his brethren said to one of my friends who had been stop- 
ping in a country house where he was the servant : — 

" Come soon again to see us, you are such a palatable gentle- 
man." 

So in regard to those terrible Irishmen, so astonishing with 
their poetry and their cruelty, their patriotic flame and vindic- 
tive rage, their eloquence and drunkenness, their spirit of 
enterprise and disorder, it is noteworthy that the caricaturists 
only show the drunkenness and disorder. One time it is an 
Irish servant-girl whom they depict, saying in her brogue to 
the inspector of immigration : — 

" Oi'm a French nurse." At another time a maid of the 
same race, whose mistress asks : — 

"Have you swept the room?" replies, "Yes, ma'm, I've 
swept everything under the bed." 

We can see that the space beneath the bed has become a 



AMERICAN PLEASURES 349 

perfect cavern of refuse, where all the leavings of the house 
have been dumped. Sometimes it is an Irishman coming 
home perfectly intoxicated, whose state the sketcher repre- 
sents by multiplying the head of his wife seven times, as she 
looks at him and out of her seven mouths says : — 

" If you saw yourself as I see you, you would be very much 
disgusted." 

"And if you saw yourself as I see you," replies the drunk- 
ard, ''you would also be very much astonished." 

Sometimes it is domestic quarrels, in which everything 
gives way, the man 'assaulting his wife with a chair and she 
retorting with a fiat-iron. And policemen, themselves Irish- 
men, preside at this carnival of tramps, negroes, and Irishmen, 
drinking hard and hitting like the others, and shouting, "Take 
that ! " as they progress with their game of head-breaking. 

No bitterness spoils the joviality. One would imagine that 
for these observers life in the streets and in the drawing-room 
is really a clownish pantomime. With that they are very exact 
— their drawings without imagination come very close to 
reality. Scarcely do they change the phiz of the tramp, the 
mouth of the Irishman, the big mouth of the negro, the self-im- 
portance and vacuity of expression of the "dude," to employ 
their slang word. One guesses that they are good-humored 
people, very lucid, very positive, writing and sketching for 
lucid, positive, and good-tempered readers. The dark mis- 
anthropy of a Gavarni or a Forain makes you suffer as you 
laugh. It entails long reflection and nerves worn with thought 
and powerless for action. The American belongs to a world 
which is too active, too hasty, and on certain sides, too healthy 
for such poisoned irony. 

It is curious to compare the sarcasm of political caricatures 
with the innocent and altogether indulgent gayety of the carica- 
ture of manners. These same sketchers, who show themselves 
simple and light caricaturers of the ridiculous characteristics 



350 OUTRE-MER 

and vices of every-day life, develop, when it becomes a matter 
of party, a species of frenzy, and of hatred which can hardly 
be surpassed. The nomination of an ambassador who does 
not suit them, the adoption of a bill against which they are 
carrying on a campaign or the rejection of a bill which they 
are upholding, a hostile candidature, -a stirring speech, — these 
are to them occasions for severe blows, the hardness of which 
contrasts in the most unexpected manner with the good temper 
of the sketchers of manners. You suddenly feel calumny 
and its bitterness, anger and its insults. From amusing and 
easy fantasy you fall into the depths of the harshest polemic, 
without wit, and without fear of making personal allusions of 
the most grossly insulting kind. It seems to me that both 
phenomena are logical and well in keeping with what may be 
seen everywhere among Americans. So far as regards the 
affairs of every-day life they are good fellows — amiable, open, 
easy. But as soon as they have to do with a business ques- 
tion, they are as keen and energetic in the defence of their 
interests and in the conquest of yours as they were found easy 
and generous before. The reason is that then they were 
amusing themselves; now they are fighting. 

Politics is one of the most important businesses of a country 
where each triumph places all public ofifices at the disposal of 
the party. It is a matter which interests not merely a small 
number of ambitious people, but an enormous number of citi- 
zens enrolled under the republican and democratic banners. 
Their antipathies must be gratified, their enthusiasm stirred, 
their passions served. 

In all countries where universal suffrage is the rule, it be- 
comes necessary to speak to the people by means of pictures. 
They see everything as a whole, and naturally like coarse and 
striking things. The colored caricatures which are set forth 
on the first pages of the illustrated newspapers satisfy their 
taste. As the editor of a Chicago newspaper said to me, they 



AMERICAN PLEASURES 351 

always like a fight. The fight here takes the form of pictured 
burlesque, but the burlesque is ordinarily so exaggerated and 
so plainly unjust and prejudiced that it becomes offensive. 
Wishing, for instance, to lampoon a perfect gentleman, who 
was simply guilty of having been nominated to a high position 
by Mr. Cleveland, the caricaturist represented that distin- 
guished man with grossly travestied features, writing under- 
neath such phrases as "Cleveland's nominee for "; or 

again, "If Abraham Lincoln were to meet Mr. So and So in 
the flesh, his first impulse would be to take him by the collar 
and throw him into a mud-hole." 

Such means of combating an adversary may succeed with 
electors of the lowest class. They are far from clever; for, 
according to Talleyrand's profound remark, "Everything 
exaggerated is insignificant," For this reason, the Ameri- 
cans succeed well in caricaturing social customs, treating 
them lightly and inoffensively, and, for a like reason, their 
political caricatures, with few exceptions, are but common- 
place. 

The American goes into all recreations — sport, the theatre, 
burlesque — with the same spirit which we have seen him bring 
into society, into social problems, into education. He shows 
himself clear-headed and positive, with a singular mixture of 
good fellowship, tenacity, practical realism, and exuberant 
social health and spirits. Students of human nature, who have 
reflected upon the laws of the equilibrium of human faculties, 
will not be astonished that in this country, where the practical 
spirit is so developed, there should be a place for other pleas- 
ures, which, for want of a better expression, I shall call the 
pleasures of mysticism. In no country more than in America 
do spiritual mediums find a better reception, nowhere do the 
occult sciences gain more adepts, nowhere is there a larger 
number of persons ready to be initiated into their mysteries. 
One of the most celebrated professors of Cambridge, who has 



352 OUTRE-MER 

made special study of the reason why his countrymen feel this 
interest in the supernatural, said to me : — 

"There are among us many minds who have no interest in 
science, but who believe in direct and personal communica- 
tion with the unknown world. Science teaches that truth is 
one, and always the same, independent of the individual; these 
people, on the contrary, are convinced that there is a constant 
revelation by Providence proportionate to the needs and 
merits of all. When I made their acquaintance, brought up 
though I had been in orthodoxy, I thought them mad." 

"And now?" I asked him. 

"Now," he replied, "like Hamlet, I think that there are 
many more things in this world than are dreamed of in our 
philosophy." 

This frame of mind in a truly superior man, who ended by 
telling me that he believed in the possibility of communica- 
tion between the living and the dead, is not exceptional in 
America. A traveller, interested in psychology, would find in 
the large number of those whom they call here spiritualists, and 
who really are mediums, a most interesting subject of study. 

Here, in place of that analysis, which would furnish the 
material for a volume, is a sketch of a visit to a woman who 
is one of the most celebrated in the United States for the gift 

of double sight. Mrs. N lives in the outskirts of Boston, 

in a condition of ease, which she owes to her singular power. 
How far is that power imaginary? How far is it real? How 
sincere is it? How much is charlatanism in this strange 
creature? These are questions which I cannot answer. Since 
a great number of Americans believe in her, it is worth while 
to describe a visit to her house, as a contribution to my in- 
quiry into the habits of thought of this country, so fruitful in 
surprises. 

My companion in this visit was Mr. H , an Australian, 

who is particularly interested in questions of this nature, and 



AMERICAN PLEASURES 353 

who himself believes absolutely in the good faith of Mrs. 

N . We met on a cold winter's morning at one of the 

stations of Boston. Nothing was more American and less in 
accordance with the character of our expedition than the res- 
taurant which we entered, to warm ourselves before setting out, 
with its hot soups, its large plates of fried oysters, its atmos- 
phere of tobacco, and its population of smokers and chewers 
making themselves drunk on cocktails at eight o'clock in the 
morning ! 

The aspect of the car which we finally took was not more 
appropriate as a preparation for spirituality. It was full of 
people of all conditions, who had come to Boston to work, 
and who were dressed in such a way as one sees only here, 
which makes it impossible to guess the social rank of the man. 
With small movable tables before them, they were all playing 

cards "for fun," as H told me, — "for the pleasure of 

passing the time." Thirty games of whist were played, while 
the train was running through a snow-clad country, all white, 
and studded with small wooden houses with wooden verandas, 
the charm of New England. This harmless gambling-room 
on wheels gives you the idea of a people who have time to 
spare, a great deal of time. The faces of the players wear an 
expression at once of freedom, fatigue, and strength. The 
moment is one, so rare in America, when the foreigner feels 
a lull, an apathy, beneath the apparent fever. There is always 
apathy beneath all activity; but to perceive it one must be in 
sjrmpathy with it. Paris to a Frenchman coming from the 
country, seems to be a town of intensest movement. To a 
Londoner, on the contrary, the Place de la Concorde and the 
boulevards give an impression of luxurious, semi-tropical idle- 
ness. But one who goes from New York to London, finds the 
old English city, in its turn, strangely tame, strangely peaceful, 
and, I was going to say, strangely backward. These expres- 
sions, however, correspond to a reality less real than we imag- 



354 OUTRE-MER 

ine. We cease to be aware of what we always feel; that is, 
what we know very well, but had forgotten; once aroused to 
a certain degree of energy, we maintain ourselves there with- 
out effort. So these hard workers amuse themselves, between 
two crises of hard work, as calmly as a French rentier in a small 
town, who spends the whole afternoon, between a morning 
and evening of utter idleness, in front of the green cloth, at a 
game of "piquet voleur " ! 

Mr. H and I alight at a country station. Low hills, all 

covered with snow, close in the horizon around the shed 
which serves as a station house. A sleigh awaits us, drawn by 
a shaggy horse, which is driven by an old man, accompanied 
by a large dog. It is the vehicle which the "seer" sends for 
her clients. There is no sham about her, nothing which 
savors of humbug or advertisement. Her seances are a pro- 
fession with her, and she practises it with a bourgeois simplic- 
ity, with the same absence of surprise, which is one of the 
most striking characteristics of the American. Whatever may 
be the strangeness of his fate, he accepts it without seeming 
more surprised at it than he is at yours. 

Here we are, then, gliding in this sleigh, up one slope and 
down another. We slip along over the snow between the 
scarce-awakened little wooden houses, fo the last one, sepa- 
rated from the street by an asphalt path, a sort of black abyss 
hollowed out in the whiteness of the snow. Footprints indi- 
cate that more than one person must that day have knocked 
at the door of this modern sorceress, to whom we in our turn 
are coming. Still the seance is expensive, — ten dollars. 
But of all passions, that which reasons the least is the super- 
natural, when it has possession of us; and we cannot but be- 
lieve that this passion is in the blood of the race, since we 
are close to Salem, that little seaside town, the theatre, just 
two hundred years ago, of a terrible persecution for witchcraft, 
in which twenty persons were condemned to death ! 



AMERICAN PLEASURES 355 

Heaven be praised, contemporary manners and customs are 

gentler, and Mrs. N 's quiet home runs no risk of being 

troubled by a like inquisition to that of the terrible Protestant 
ministers of 1692. A little girl receives us, all smiles, and 
conducts us into the parlor, saying that her mother has had a 
great many sittings during the past few days, and that she is 
very tired. The furniture of the room is just the same as 
that of hundreds of others of the same class which I have 
seen. On the wall a picture of Christ bearing the Cross, 
on the table a Bible, bear witness to the owner's religious 
sentiments, and volumes of poetry — Tennyson's Princess, 
Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel, Moore's Lalla Rookh, 
— testify to the purity of her literary tastes. She appears 
presently, — a woman apparently thirty-five years old. The 
outline of her features seems almost elastic, doubtless owing 
to the extraordinary suppleness of the muscles of her face. 
Her complexion is fair, bloodless, pale, and lighted up by 
eyes so strangely bright and so fixed, that on looking into the 
contracted pupils, so dark and brilliant, you feel an undefina- 
ble uneasiness. She is, however, very unaffected, and when 
she speaks it is with a soft and languid voice. 

She tells you that she is not equal to the demands upon 
her, that her trances tire her too much, also that she has given 
a great number of ineffectual sittings, so greatly are her nerves 
overtaxed. And, in truth, when one sees her entering into 
her "trance," as she calls it, it is easy to understand what 
such an organism must expend in vitality under such an 
experience. 

With the shutters closed, and every light extinguished, 
except a candle under the table, she unfastens her hair, settles 
herself at ease in her loose garment, and takes the hands of 
one of us. Some minutes of silence and expectancy pass, and 
then she begins to wail and twist her fingers, which escape 
from the grasp and wander into her hair. She sighs heavily, 



356 OUTRE-MER 

deeply, with sighs that seem to come from her innermost 
being J her bowed head bends forward more and more, her 
entire body is contorted, as though she were fighting against 
an attack. Then comes a pause. She sleeps. Her open 
palms reach out to feel the face, the shoulders, the arm of 
the person in front of her, and she begins to speak in a changed 
voice, with an Irish accent. Her veritable "self " has disap- 
peared, giving place to another. She has ceased to be Mrs. 

N , living near Boston, Massachusetts, and has become a 

certain French doctor, who died at Lyons. 

"A strange man, that doctor," said some one to me, who 
had attended several seatices of this Yankee pythoness. " You 
know him, he knows you. He is useful to the last degree, 
pleasant, always at your service. He is a parasite, who 
seems to wish to excuse himself for living at the expense of 
another, and at the same time he is something of a fraud." 

I never could find out whether the person who said this was 
serious or joking. I imagine that the American who interests 
himself in these phenomena of double sight, does not him- 
self know. What attracts him in such experiences is the sat- 
isfaction of that need of excitement which follows him through 
all the vicissitudes of fortune, and which is ever as intense as 
upon the first day. Then there is a certain nervous want of 
balance, from which many persons suffer here, — a reaction of 
the inveterate realism of the world around them; above all, it is 
the undying instinct of the heart of man — more alive in these 
natures, more genuine and more intense than in others — to 
pierce that veil of mystery with which human life is enfolded. 
By a sort of compensation, wherein a philosopher would recog- 
nize the great law of the correlation of forces, the sense of 
mystery becomes more acute in a country where everything is 
too evident, too definite, too voluntary. 

One of the most striking traits in the psychology of men 
of action is the presence in them of a vein of superstition, 



AMERICAN PLEASURES 357 

the more evident as they are more resolute and thoughtful. 
Napoleon was a startling example of this. Men of action 
such as the Americans are, and of action so intense, could 
hardly fail to have their own kind of illuminism, and why 
should I not acknowledge that, in the course of seances, such 

as Mrs. N gave us that day and on another occasion, 

it is impossible not to admit certain phenomena, which, in 
fact, remain entirely inexplicable from the purely natural 
point of view. 

A traveller's diary such as this is hardly the place for a dis- 
cussion of problems so complex as the question whether it is 
possible for thought to communicate with thought without the 

intermediary of a sign. Mrs. N was holding my hands, 

and at the same time touching a small travelling-clock, which 
had belonged to some one she could not possibly have known, 
— a sculptor, who killed himself under particularly sad cir- 
cumstances of temporary madness. How did she know this, 
how learn even the profession of the former owner of the clock, 
and of his madness, and even of the details of his suicide? 
Was there a communication between my mind and hers, united 
by the personality of that mysterious Lyonese doctor? Did 
my hands, which she held in hers, reveal by shakings percepti- 
ble to her hyper-acute nerves what my impression was after 
each of her words, and had she in her sleep preserved a power 
of being guided by these small signs? Or, rather, — for it is 
always well to reserve a place for scepticism, — was she an 
incomparable actress, who guessed my thoughts solely from 
the tone of my questions and answers? 

But no. She was sincere. The psychologists who have 
studied her in her trances know too well the character of mag- 
netic sleep by mechanical means, which do not cheat. All 
that I can conclude from the really extraordinary details which 
she gave me, a passing stranger, about one who had disap- 
peared, and of whom I had spoken to no one with whom 



358 OUTRE-MER 



1 



she was acquainted, is that the spirit has methods of knowl- 
edge unsuspected in our analysis. I remember that one of 
the American Buddhists whom I had met here said to me : — 

" In Europe and the East you give an enormous, immoder- 
ate, and unique importance to demonstration, which is but 
organized sense vitality. There is something else." 

When he spoke thus, we were seated at the table of a club, 
toward the end of a repast which had been prolonged by the 
conversation of twenty guests. Around us were bottles of 
'Apollinaris and whiskey, green mint in glasses with cracked 
ice, and boxes of cigars, all symbolizing that which is least 
ideal, least mysterious in civilized life; and this strange man 
went on to speak of the far East, of its religions, with their 
atmosphere of dreams, of the wisdom of those people, and of 
their inaction. Who knows but that certain powers of mysti- 
cism, to-day almost abolished in the modern world, will again 
wake up, and certain faculties of the mind temporarily para- 
lyzed, begin to work again; who knows whether our humanity 
will not see again a period analogous to that of the Alexan- 
drians and the Gnostics, or, more correctly, of the Brahmins? 
It would be one of the greatest ironies of nature if a future 
awakening of the so-called occult sciences should have one of 
its starting-points in America. 

At all events, researches in morbid psychology have no- 
where been pushed further than here, and for this reason alone 
it is worth while to tell of this visit to the hermitage of Mrs. 

N . When she awoke from her sleep, she seized my 

companion and myself, each by the arm, with a tragic gesture. 
Thus she remained some seconds, clearly without recognizing 
us. Then a kind of pale smile came over her tired face. 
The "seer" gave way to the simple person of New England, 
who offered us tea with a voice which had become soft 
again. She seemed to have completely forgotten — indeed, 
she had completely forgotten — the singular doctor with the 



AMERICAN PLEASURES 359 

Irish accent, who had gone into some country far from ours. 
Vanished, but where? Chimera of her imagination? Inven- 
tion of her will? Supra-sensible reality? Who can unriddle 
this enigma? 

It would be unjust, in these few notes on American recrea- 
tions, not to mention the lively interest which the cultivated 
people of this country — and they are legion — profess for the 
pleasures of the intellect. I have already tried to note, as 
regards conversation in society, the part their intelligence 
has to play in it, how much the will has to do with it, resulting 
in what I have called the "point of view." When Americans 
turn toward the intellectual sidexjf life, then the words of the 
anchorite of the Middle Ages become true. Their ear is 
really not satisfied with hearing, just as their eye is not satis- 
fied with seeing. 

Through his intense and ever-active curiosity, the Ameri- 
can, that son of a recent nation, has reached that condi- 
tion of mind which we are in the habit of considering as the 
supreme vice and the last refinement of a century of decay, 
namely, dilettantism. I have found this condition of mind, 
which consists in entering through thought into the most diffi- 
cult and contradictory forms of life, adopting them in order 
to study and understand them, in a higher state of development 
in the United States than anywhere else. I have concluded 
from it that we moralists of old Europe are very wrong in 
attributing to this condition our sentimental degeneracies and 
the maladies of will, which really belong with the senility of 
our society. Everything is pure to the pure, says a proverb, 
often incorrectly interpreted. It is also true that in the moral 
domain everything is healthy to the healthy and unhealthy 
to the unhealthy. This is a conclusion most frequently forced 
upon me in the course of this journey. It is at once consol- 
ing and cruel, — consoling because it diminishes our own and 
our fathers' share of the responsibility for the maladies with 



360 OUTRE-MER 

which we see Europe afflicted, and cruel — but do I need to 
say why ? 

This dilettantism of the cultivated Americans is recognized 
more particularly in the literary clubs, clubs which they like 
to call Bohemian, although between the true Bohemianism 
and these organizations, with their practical comfort, there is 
all the difference between a hotel of the new style, with elec- 
tricity, hot water, and elevators and a pension bourgeoise of 
the rue de la Clef. 

One of the most representative clubs which I saw was the 
Tavern Club, of Boston. It occupies three floors of a small 
house, the interior partitions of which have been knocked 
out, in order to form large rooms. The ground-floor serves 
as a smoking-room and ante-chamber, and the first floor is a 
dining-room. Above is a kind of hall where music is played 
and private theatricals given. 

This club corresponds well enough to certain societies that 
formerly existed in the Latin Quarter, — such as the Hydro- 
paths, whose founder, the poet, Emile Goudeau, has written a 
clever and lively history of it in a small volume entitled Ten 
Years of Bohemianism. I may remark in passing that this 
book, which has attracted little notice, is, according to my 
mind, a most exact contribution to the history of the habits 
and the ideas of our literary youth between 1870 and 1880. 
The literary youth of Boston, young writers, young painters, 
and young musicians, founded this Tavern Club. The fol- 
lowing are some of the features of difference which I have 
noticed while frequenting this club and similar ones in New 
York and elsewhere; they appear to me to characterize well 
enough the particularly healthy state of American dilettan- 
tism : — 

I. The respect of the young for their elders, and also the 
respect of the elders for the young. The president of the 
Tavern Club, for instance, is the distinguished Professor 



AMERICAN PLEASURES 361 

Norton, of Cambridge, and when the chib gives its monthly 
dinner, white-haired judges, bankers, doctors, are there, seated 
at the table with all the youngsters. The American who is 
concerned with intellectual life no more hesitates in the pur- 
suit of novelty than one engaged in business in the pursuit 
of fortune. You will hear an aged collector of pictures 
discussing with a stripling about to start for Paris the works 
of Degas or of Gustave Moreau, with the same supple- 
ness of intellect which another will develop in speaking to a 
writer of romance of Flaubert, of the brothers de Goncourt, 
or of Maupassant. There is a great deal gained by this inter- 
course of men of various ages with one another. 

But is it not rather an effect than a cause? The oppositions 
of taste and the disagreements between men of different ages 
which exist among us arise from the totally different ways of 
living of these classes. I imagine that the young Parisians 
of to-day are not very different from those whom I knew 
when I was under thirty. We were in a revolt against our 
elders in all that concerned sentiments and habits. It is not 
so in America, where literary and artistic tastes are purely 
intellectual. I have already remarked, in regard to Harvard, 
that a liking for French writers of the Extreme Left is both 
frequent and innocent. Just so we see one of Ch^ret's adver- 
tising sheets, representing the Moulin Rouge, decorating the 
walls of the Tavern Club, alongside a copy of "The Spinners," 
of Velasquez, that picture in which a woman's throat is painted 
with such power. The little figure of the Parisian gutter 
woman has here just the value of those pretty little Greek 
courtesans who have become the statuettes of Tanagra ! 

2. The profound knowledge of foreign literatures and arts. 
The few names which I have quoted are so celebrated, that to 
mention them alone proves a certain amount of reading, but 
these people utter these and twenty others, with references 
which reveal not a superficial reading acquaintance with 



362 OUTRE-MER 

them, but serious and conscientious study, — I will not say a 
complete comprehension. For the best-informed dilettan- 
tism is often a little uncertain when it applies itself to writers 
of a foreign country. 

I thus heard at Oxford one of the most exquisite critics of 
our age, the regretted Walter Pater, speaking to me in the 
same sentence of Flaubert and Feuillet, as the two French 
prose writers that he liked the best, associating in similar 
admiration and for the same reasons two styles, the difference 
between which, absolute as it is, he did not perceive. At 
other times these impressions of foreigners are singularly 
suggestive, and show us unexpected depths in the works of 
our own country. 

At a dinner at one of these clubs, a guest had just quoted 
the witty saying of old Professor Jowett, of Oxford, the master 
of Balliol : " It is not lasciate ogni speranza which is written 
over the door of hell, but rather, 'here they read French 
novels, ' " when another guest rose and proposed a toast to 
Zola, with the sentiment that sympathy for the sinner is the 
soul of that great romance writer's works, and describing this 
as one of the most beneficent and humane sentiments in an era 
in which the influence of surroundings on the development 
of personality has been recognized by science as a fundamen- 
tal law. 

"If we do not join to justice pity for those who are the 
victims of it, what place do we give to justice in our universe? " 

I wish that the enemies of the admirable author of Ger- 
minal z.wdi La Debacle who reproach him for giving foreigners 
a bad impression of French literature, had been present at 
that banquet and heard that defence uttered amid the ap- 
plause of all, in one of the most respectable cities of New 
England. 

3. The absence of every element of libertinage in conver- 
sation and in the mind. This is the true sign of great Intel- 



1 



AMERICAN PLEASURES 363 

lectuality. This quality admits of breadth of apprehension, 
as may be seen by the example which I have just quoted. I 
am sure that the very sincere severity shown to certain French 
writers by excellent judges in France is owing to the fact that 
sexual life occupies an exceptionally prominent place in our 
habits. We very rarely find an inhabitant of the Latin coun- 
tries who can consider a book which treats of the passion of 
love with absolute independence of judgment. His imagina- 
tion is either tickled or disgusted. When, on the contrary, 
an Anglo-Saxon can free himself from hypocrisy and cant, 
all serious study of the human soul, daring as it may be, 
seems to him legitimate. I had noted this feature, so little 
observed and yet so logical, while talking of Baudelaire with 
the youths of Harvard. But I could quote twenty examples 
of it, derived from a quality which is entirely to the honor 
of that great democracy, at times so coarse, namely, the 
worship of talent. 

Though it is by no means exceptional, I have nowhere rec- 
ognized this rare and delicate sentiment more than in Boston. 
It is the contrary which is the exception ; namely, that spirit 
of disparagement evinced by derogatory anecdotes in which 
so much envy is concealed. I could mention certain houses 
that are veritable museums of literary piety, one, among 
others, all the windows of which open out on the Charles 
River. The aged lady who lives there, the wife of an editor, 

Mrs. F , has made her house one of the most significant 

museums which I visited. I saw there a portrait of Dickens 
as a young man with long, flowing hair, a feminine face, 
almost the pendant of the admirable head of George Sand, 
painted by Delacroix, with deep black eyes, which used to 
light up the severe cabinet of old Buloz. 

Letters and manuscripts of the great man lay around, show- 
ing one of those cramped and nervous handwritings which 
revealed the abuse of "copy." The mistress of the house 



364 OUTRE-MER 

described him to me as he sat in that same room after his 
reading, exhausted by his nervous effort, merry, however, 
and full of anecdotes. 

The last time he came to the United States nothing amused 
him so much as the artless form of flattery devised by a 
mother of a family who had asked him to dinner. He arrived 
and found a child in the first room. 

"What is your name?" asked the writer. 

"David Copperfield," replied the little boy. 

"And yours?" asked Dickens of another who entered. 

"Oliver Twist," was the reply. 

"And I am Little Dorrit," said a small girl. 

"And I am Florence Dombey," said another. 

Dickens was very much out of health when this adventure 
occurred. Gout made every movement painful, and the results 
of overwork had already begun to make his remunerative read- 
ings very arduous. However, in relating this story he showed 
all the gayety of his first visit to the United States, 

Opposite his romantic head, is the lined and thoughtful 
face of the powerful analyst, Thackeray. A slip of paper is 
fastened below, on which we read, traced in microscopic 
characters, this brief adieu : — 

"Good-bye, Mrs. F , good-bye, my dear F , good- 
bye to all. I go home." 

He had been a month in America, occupied with engage- 
ments of extreme importance. Toward Christmas the desire 
to see his children got the better of him, and this note tells 
of the abruptness of his departure. On the walls is also a 
portrait of Carlylewhen young, and it is very like Carlylewhen 
old, in the depth of the eyes below the curve of the brow, in 
the shape of the forehead, and the firmness of the jaw. That 
forehead and that chin is all Carlyle. There is a lack of 
human nature in that strong physiognomy, too set, too self- 
willed. This is one of the faces that offend those who look 



AMERICAN PLEASURES 365 

at them, that defy the spectator, and arm themselves with 
outward arrogance to conceal the feeling of inward security. 

For my part, I prefer the high and serene beauty of Tenny- 
son, that Virgil of the Isle of Wight, who has so well known 
how to collect its waters around his garden of dreams. The 
fairy of this little museum of relics told me of a promenade 
she had had with the poet in a real garden in Surrey, where, 
having inhaled the sweet aroma of the violets, he said to her 
in his deep voice : — 

"Down on our knees, these are violets." 

And he did as he had said, in order that he might relig- 
iously gather the fragrance of the flowers without picking 
them. 

I like also the portrait of noble Emerson, with his thin 
face lighted up by his high ideal — and what writing is his, 
passionate, inspired, from one end of the line to the other! 
Other autographs in an immense collection showed the writing 
of Longfellow, half slanting, very firm, very clear, always the 
same; and the simple and strong handwriting of Lowell. In 
thought I go back ten years, and again I se.e his face, with 
its long beard and simple expression, as it appeared to me at 
the Rabelais Club, in London. Little did I suspect then that 
he would die so soon, and that I should be turning over his 
manuscripts in his native town, chatting about him the while 
as of one whose recollection is piously preserved, among many 
others. 

That piety, that literary cult impressed me, touched me. 
I find in it a desire to have celebrated men for friends, but, 
after all, such a desire is in a measure right. It is legitimate 
to love glorious men, whose superiority we feel through their 
reputation; especially when one does not maliciously draw 
attention to their faults for the petty pleasure of humiliating 
that superiority. Americans may have many faults, but they 
are certainly neither small nor mean. 



366 OUTRE-MER 

Another feature of intellectual dilettantism, in the particular 
phase which it takes in America, is the search for sensations 
by travelling, and by travelling in a large and audacious way 
bewildering to our European imagination — at least it would 
have been so if Pierre Loti had not somewhat accustomed us 
to the most distant journeyings. But Loti remains alone 
among us. I am not sure that criticism would permit even 
him those wanderings in Japan or Oceania, if the great writer 
had not the excuse of his calling to offer for those expe- 
ditions, which he tells of with the grace of a poet sensitive 
even to painfulness and delicate almost to morbidness. To 
an American artist, on the contrary, those journeyings through 
the vast world in quest of a little fresh beauty seem so natural 
that neither the public, nor himself, even thinks of noticing 
their dangers and eccentricities. I remember hearing an 
American writer say to me : — 

"I shall return to Japan next year for the flower season," 
just as simply as he would; have announced to me a trip from 
Paris to Saint-Germain, i 

This passion for long journeys is so common that it has 
modified the system of holidays for professors in the most 
unexpected manner. They have every seven years a full year 
of holiday, which they call the "Sabbatical year," and which 
they employ in visits to Europe, to Africa, or to Asia, accord- 
ing to the needs of their studies or their"! curiosity. 

Nowhere have I more strongly felt thte influence of travel 
upon the intellectual American than in New York, in the studio 
of the admirable painter — who is too little known among us 
in spite of his French name — John La Farge. The man him- 
self, who is no longer very young, with his refined face and 
white skin, as though dried up by internal heat, with his rest- 
less eyes in strongly outlined, drawn eyelids, gives a good 
impression of one of those nervous activities which no effort 
satisfies, which no experience appeases, and which are ever 



AMERICAN PLEASURES 367 

searching and in motion. He has invented a new process for 
stained glass; he has exercised himself in decoration and illus- 
tration, in painting in oils and in wax, in vast altar pieces, 
such as the grandiose and delicate "Ascension" of the Fifth 
Avenue Episcopal Church, and in pastels, and only a few 
months ago he was travelling about through the Pacific Islands 
— Samoa, Tahiti, the Fijis. 

"We wanted to go very far," said he to me. "Japan is too 
near. They have the telegraph there. The Pacific always 
means two months without news." 

That is the longing of the artist, tired of conventional life, 
tired of the railroad, of the telephone, of all that facilitates 
business and saves time, hungering after novel sensations, 
and above all devoted to his art; valiantly, heroically resolved 
to live only for his thoughts, during days and days; and while 
that cold, snowy January afternoon was freezing the town, those 
islets scattered on the map became alive, bright, and green 
for me in pictures and water-colors of this refined painter, 
whose smallest works show him to be of the race of Fromen- 
tin, the visionary, who thinks his feelings — a rare power. 
Here are branches too green, at the edge of a too blue sea; 
the veins of the leaves seem saturated with water, and tell 
of the eternal humidity of the air. Banana trees rear their 
straight trunks, bearing their long supple leaf -blades. Cocoa- 
nut trees wave their palms in the ceaseless Pacific wind, 
the wind that goes, like the immense swell of the wide ocean, 
from one pole to the other. The burao, a large tree with a 
knotted trunk, spreads out its broad leaves like those of our 
fig trees. Flowers everywhere, above all, the flat-petalled, 
full-blown corollas of the strange hibiscus. In this scenery 
of nature low hovels are seen, with thatched roofs and open 
sides, along which fall flexible mattings. 

Men and women pass between those trees at the edge of the 
sea; some dancing with crowns of roses; others, hidden by 



368 OUTRE-MER 

branches, cowering on the earth in wait to commit murder; 
others carrying on their shoulders light skiffs ; others em- 
barked in similar boats going forth to fish. And around them 
is that trim landscape, cleaned, almost combed. 

"The savage," says the painter, profoundly, "is the old- 
fashioned gentleman, the gentleman of tradition, who does 
everything according to custom, and who does not wish to 
change his habits; " and, showing a young girl, who is shoot- 
ing a canoe across an apparently fearful cascade, he adds: 
"She is not frightened; for there is not a turn of the ground 
which she does not know, not a pebble which has not been in 
the same place for centuries, out of the water and under the 
water. In that country, when you hurt your foot, you say, 
'Sure enough, my grandfather told me there was a stone on 
that road ! ' " 

Above all, the bathing scenes are charming to behold. 
Wide rivers flow through the woods, and women throw them- 
selves into the water, blue with the reflection of the sky, with 
noble, antique immodesty. Children play in the surf of the 
ocean. The wave breaks on reefs, and, in places where it 
drags along the coral bottom, its green shade becomes so pure 
and so intense that it takes the coloring of a precious stone. 
At other times, at sunset, it is quite rosy. The brown and 
lissome nudity of the savage is outlined on this blue ocean 
with the fineness of an antique bronze. 

You feel the soft and caressing atmosphere, where the 
human animal is happy in an almost vegetative felicity, where 
it is languid as a plant. Tahitian women, sitting around the 
fire, which lights them up fantastically, their bodies clothed 
in long dresses of light material, with straw hats on their 
small heads, seem to be playing at winter, while other groups 
make up scenes of Biblical or Hellenic grandeur: a blind and 
naked old man, led by a child; a dark youth galloping on 
horseback, at the edge of the sea; dances, — bacchanalian, I 



AMERICAN PLEASURES 369 

was about to say, — where the thick foliage of the wreaths worn 
by the wild female dancers recalls the festivals in the ravines 
of Taygeta, celebrated by the poet : — 

. . . et virginibus bacchata Lacoenis 
Taygeta. . . . 

The joy of the artist as he shows these studies is pleasing to 
witness. His eye warms, delighting itself again in that light, 
his mind goes back to that primitive life with the delight of 
second youth and of initiation. He raises the stole of the 
Buddhist priest, which veils an unfinished picture, and with 
the action reveals a figure painted in wax, with colors so 
blended as to be almost indistinguishable. A woman is 
seated, her feet crossed, her arms folded, her eyelids lowered, 
clothed in material of a marvellous tissue, so diaphanous that 
it seems about to melt away in the light of an aureole which 
she herself seems to project. A cascade falls at the side of 
this enigmatic form, the water flowing endlessly, symbol of 
time that passes in eternal flight. 

The young goddess, nevertheless, remains motionless in 
her youth, whose serenity seems to have been attained 
through storms. She is the Goddess of Meditation, "the 
being who sees sounds," as the artist tells me. Silent, dead 
to life, absorbed in her dream, she spreads peacefulness 
around her. The grand lesson of the nullity of human 
activity comes from the farthest East to this country of in- 
tense effort. The fever of culture, with which these men are 
V possessed, makes them capable of understanding through 
innumerable experiences, and of translating into palpable 
form, the poetry of meditative passiveness, so contrary to 
their race. As after reading certain novels by Henry James, 
so, too, on leaving John La Farge's studio, I have the im- 
pression, nay, rather the evidence, that the American soul, 
when once it sees the beauty of being delicate, reaches acute 

BB 



370 



OUTRE-MER 



shades of analysis and unequalled visions. But the painter, 
like the writer of romance, is solitary. Neither forms a 
part of a school or even of a group. Personality, the un- 
changeable individuality of their culture, is still a feature of 
this country, and one which does not admit of the predic- 
tion that there will ever be any American art. Nevertheless, 
there are, at the present day, very great and admirable Ameri- 
can artists, and that is enough, after all, for the glory of a 
people. 



IX 
DOWN SOUTH 

I. In Georgia 

The author begs the reader to look upon this narrative as a "short 
story," all the facts in which are true, but in which the author, for personal 
reasons, has been obliged to make several alterations. — P. B. 

The misfortune of a somewhat prolonged journey in the 
United States is that you begin to recognize at each fresh 
halting-place that the country is really too vast, too complex; 
that after having amassed mountains of notes, there are still 
mountains to amass; that after having lived in this or that 
town a month, it would be necessary to live there a year; that 
after having studied this or that class of people, thousands of 
other classes remain yet to be studied. 

I especially felt this immensity, this complexity, during 
the course of an excursion through the South, of which I 
retain memories that I shall not attempt to connect with the 
preceding notes. This is perhaps the best way of making 
this travelling journal conform to reality. For, indeed, 
Charleston passed, a fresh country begins. The flora changes 
as well as the sky, the fauna as well as the people. The real 
reasons which precipitated these two worlds at each other's 
throats, using slavery as a pretext, appear to you as clear as 
do those which caused the war of 1870, when you cross the 
Rhine. But the wounds of our ancient Europe, like those in 
a poisoned body that has lost the power of creating fresh cuti- 
cle, have not closed; while, in the American nation, they 

371 



372 OUTRE-MER 



have not only healed, but have been forgotten. The difficult 
task has been entered upon of finally mixing, blending, and 
amalgamating these two portions of a vast empire, this North 
and this South, so naturally, so radically antithetic. 

You open a chance newspaper, in the train that carries you 
toward Charleston, and you see that the present Speaker of 
Congress, corresponding to our President of the Chamber of 
Deputies, was formerly an officer in the Confederate army. 
Prisoner of war for a year, he began the study of law immedi- 
ately peace was concluded. He has had a career as a lawyer, 
and is now one of the important leaders of the Democratic 
party. Mr. Wilson is another illustration of the same state 
of affairs, — the Mr. Wilson who is so popular, the applauded 
author of a celebrated bill, the man whom I saw the other 
day in Congress carried in triumph upon the shoulders of his 
admirers, after a speech, with a basket of roses in his arms. 

The flow of life has resumed its course in this powerful 
organism ; and of a terrible war, lasting several years, — a war 
of races, a war of climates, a war of principles, a war of inter- 
ests, a war of pride, — there remains no other trace than that 
contained in the list of pens-ions inscribed on the budget. 
This list, a fact almost incomprehensible to one not initiated 
in the hidden workings of American politics, increases in 
amount as the war period is left behind. 

The soldiers of the North and the soldiers Of the South 
meet and fraternize, just as though the slaughters of Chancel- 
lorsville and Gettysburg had never taken place. No, I am 
mistaken. The heroic struggle has left more noble traces 
than a shameful abuse of war pensions. It has left the mem- 
ory of a common bravery, a proof that American industrialism 
has not diminished the energy of the race. It has left the 
legend of Lincoln, of one of those men who, simply by the 
propagation of their example, mould in their image the con- 
science of an entire country. This personage, so American by 



1 



DOWN SOUTH 373 

the composite character of his being, humorous and pathetic 
at one and the same time; this politician, acquainted with all 
artifices and trickeries, and yet so capable of idealism and 
mysticism; this half-educated man, with his magnificent sim- 
plicities of eloquence; this former woodman, his face embit- 
tered with disappointment and luminous with hope, enfeebled 
by trial and yet so strong; this statesman, close to the people, 
and yet gifted with such amplitude of vision, — is the most 
modern of heroes, one whom the United States may safely 
compare with Napoleon, with Cavour, with Bismarck. To-day 
the South recognizes his grandeur, as well as the North. He 
had the good fortune to be just the workman that was neces- 
sary for the task he undertook, and to die immediately his task 
was accomplished. Great destinies are made up of such timely 
hazards. 

In selecting as the first stopping-place in my Southern travels 
a little town in Georgia, I was trying to realize a desire to 
meet an old ofificer of the Northern army, a particular friend 
of the great President. His name I must also keep secret. I 
will simply call him Colonel Scott, a disguise that will not 
hide him from his acquaintances. A mutual friend, who had 
given me a letter for him in Washington, described him to 
me. "Prepare," he said, "to meet one of the most compli- 
cated of men, a many-sided man, as we say. You will see 
for yourself. He comes originally from Massachusetts and 
there is the Puritan in him yet. He has been through the war, 
and he is still a soldier. He has studied medicine, and he 
is something of a scientist. Then he went into business and 
directed a large company manufacturing uniform and livery 
buttons, so that he is somewhat of a tradesman. Besides this 
there is in him a little of the landed proprietor, of the gen- 
tleman farmer, ever since he purchased a large plantation in 
the South on account of his daughter's health. And he is, 
above all, a charming personality, charitable and honest, full 



374 OUTRE-MER 

of curious memories of Lincoln, Grant, Hooker, Sherman. 
Certainly you must have a chat with him." 

I arrived, then, at Philippeville — that is the pseudonym I 
shall ask the reader to accept for this little city in Georgia — 
toward the middle of the month of March. My first step was 
to ask the address of Mr. Scott. I was told that he lived only 
about two miles from the town, but that I ought to write to 
him in order that I might not make the journey uselessly. 

"He is passionately fond of hunting," added Mr. Williams, 
the hotel proprietor, who gave me these details. "He some- 
times remains out three or four days without returning to 
the house. You know, sir, that we have the best hunting 
in America here; deer, duck, wild turkey, partridge, quail, 
and not a single wild animal, not a bear, not a puma. Ah, 
Philippeville beats every town in the South." 

"Not a wild animal?" said I. "And the alligators and the 
rattlesnakes? " 

"Oh, they're all down there in Florida," he replied. 
"Why, my dear sir, I've been here for twenty years during 
the winter and spring, and I've never seen a bigger snake 
than an adder." 

The worthy Mr. Williams neglected to add that, during 
these twenty years of residence, he had not quitted his hotel 
a hundred times, a hotel which, by the way, realized an 
ideal of comfort for travellers. He treated all travellers 
like friends, as careful of their well-being and recreation as 
though he had really been the host of some country-seat where 
was gathered a group of invited guests. I do not think you 
will meet anywhere in the world, save in America, this type 
of hotel proprietor, a man perfectly well-mannered, a man 
who dines in evening dress every day in the common dining- 
hall, opposite his wife, who is also in evening toilette, and who 
then passes the evening in the drawing-room, chatting and 
listening to an orchestra engaged for the season. I engaged a 



DOWN SOUTH 375 

small light carriage on the morrow of my arrival in Philippe- 
ville; and passing down the long route, bordered by wooden 
cabins and populated by negroes, went with my black coach- 
man through a great forest of pitch pines, strewn with honey- 
suckles in full bloom and as high as ourselves, and finally 
arrived at a large open turnstile upon which were written the 
simple words : " Scott's Place." 

I can see myself again, as though in a dream, alighting from 
the little carriage and walking up a winding path, bordered 
by trees of odorous fragrance, and I again see, at the end of 
the path, the large, low house which was evidently that of the 
master. It was built of wood, like those of the negroes of 
Philippeville, but of varnished wood, lacquered yellow, with 
the roof painted a sombre red, and surrounded with a wooden 
veranda painted a bluish white. 

I had not to take the trouble of ringing and asking for the 
master of this Southern country-seat, so peaceful and so coquet- 
tish, with its one story, and with its garment of clambering 
roses. A troop of fifteen or twenty negroes, men, women, and 
children, clustered before the staircase, ranged in a circle round 
a man of about sixty years of age, very tall, very red, but still 
robust and slender, in a huntsman's costume, with high leather 
gaiters and a striped velvet jacket. The Colonel, for it was he, 
did not perceive my approach any more than did the negroes 
who surrounded him, regarding him with breathless attention, 
so absorbed were they all in some strange task. Colonel Scott 
was bending over a rather large wooden box of open lattice- 
work, that appeared to contain some singular animal in a state 
of extreme irritation, to judge from the sounds that issued 
from it — sounds that resembled a file rubbed furiously on 
some extremely hard substance. He held in his right hand a 
stick, at the end of which he had fixed an enormous wad of 
cotton, and he worked this stick about through the interstices 
of the box, while he poured in it with his right hand the con- 



376 OUTRE-MER 

tents of a large bottle full of a water-colored liquid. I recog- 
nized almost immediately the sickly-sweet odor of chloro- 
form. What was the animal the Colonel was trying to stupefy 
in this way? The filing sound became more and more feeble. 
You could hear it dying away like the moaning of an invalid 
succumbing under the influence of some powerful ansesthetic. 

A negro said, "He's asleep now." The Colonel emptied 
the remainder of the bottle into the box, stirring around, 
meanwhile, the baton — I suppose to make all sure. Then, 
taking up a pair of pincers, he tore off one of the planks at the 
top and turned the box upside down. Out of it, I first saw 
issue the monstrous head of a serpent — a head as big as my 
hand, triangular and flat, with swollen glands hanging limply 
from the end of a long neck, of which I could see the throb- 
bing throat, with its white, soft skin. The long body un- 
coiled and rolled out to the length of about eight feet, thicker 
than my arm, and terminated by a little tail composed of a 
dozen rings, looking as though cut out of gray horn. The 
sight of this rattlesnake was so hideous, so worthy of the sur- 
name, atrox, given by the naturalist to this variety, — Crotalus 
atrox, — that there was among the negroes a hurried attempt to 
retreat from the animal, which was, nevertheless, so defence- 
less at this moment. 

The Colonel, with the rapidity of a workman who knows 
that every instant is precious, forced a stick into the mouth 
of this formidable monster. The raised jaw revealed the 
inside of the mouth, a horrible red of living flesh, with the 
thin, bifurcated tongue looking as though glued to the palate. 
I saw him with his free hand take up some metal instrument 
— one of those forceps that dentists use. He grasped, with 
the pincer, one of the fangs in the jaw, which was beginning 
to bleed. A little effort, and he dropped upon the ground one 
of the teeth of the monster, then a second, then a third, then 
a fourth — four long, curved, hollow needles, horrible and 



DOWN SOUTH 377 

delicate biting instruments, which at that very instant con- 
tained enough venom to cause death, even with a scratch. 
The animal, nevertheless, continued to sleep with a bloody 
foam upon the borders of its closed jaw. The Colonel 
seized it by the middle of its body, with his hairy hand, 
and threw the inert mass into the box, renailed the cover 
with three strokes of his hammer, picked up, one by one, 
the dangerous defences, and placed them carefully on the 
wooden block of the steps devoted to the use of the horse- 
men, and called a negro. 

"This big fellow will be a little astonished when he wakes. 
Take him away and don't get into the habit of bringing me 
a new one every morning." 

As he pronounced these words, his eyes met mine. They 
were gray eyes that glistened in the ruddy face with a singu- 
lar brilliancy of youth. He did not hesitate about my 
identity any more than I had hesitated about his. The letter 
of introduction that I had sent him in the morning, announc- 
ing my visit in the afternoon, left him no room for doubt. 
He saluted me by name while shaking my hand, and said, in 
French, without any further preamble, with the immediate 
familiarity of the American : — 

"That's the sixth that I've operated upon in two years, and 
the third this year. That's why I spoke to them as you heard 
me. Jim Kennedy is the proprietor of a collection of mon- 
sters that he is taming, I don't know how. He is going to 
show them from town to town, from village to village, and to 
earn, in a few weeks, sufificient to enable him to live for months 
without working. That's the character of all these blacks," 
he continued, shrugging his shoulders; "as soon as they have 
enough to eat, they won't move their little finger." 

"But suppose that they're happy thus, Colonel? " I replied. 

"Happy?" he repeated abruptly. "Happy! They're only 
too happy, but it's a brute's happiness, and it degrades them 



378 OUTRE-MER 

more than slavery. Yes, sir," he continued, with an insistence 
in which I found the Puritan that I have spoken about. 
"They were worth more when they were slaves, you may 
believe me. I was one of those who served under Lincoln 
with the utmost enthusiasm, and I don't dispute the truth of 
the principles we fought for. No, I do not dispute it. He 
is not a man who admits that there can exist a single slave in 
the world eighteen hundred years after Christ. Unfortunately, 
we imagined that we had finished when we had freed them. 
But that was too simple. Our troubles only began then. 
We didn't realize that a being of an inferior race, like the 
negro, could not pass at once to a superior condition without 
danger. You will see some sad things in the South, sir, if you 
travel. 

" But here I am, keeping you out in this afternoon sun, which 
is nothing to me and which is suffocating to you. Come into 
the house, and be presented to Miss Scott. It's only a modest 
little house, but it will give you, for all that, an idea of what 
the house of a slave proprietor in Georgia was forty years ago. 
All around it, you see, were the negro cabins. I have left 
three or four of them standing. The cooTcing was done in that 
little building out there. Here were the stables. I have only 
repaired those which the Chastins left. That's a French name, 
isn't it? It's the name of the family that lived here. The last 
member of it has been dead about nine years. They came 
from New Orleans. Would you believe that after the war, 
ruined by the emancipation of their slaves and having nothing 
to live upon except this land, they remained here for several 
years almost without leaving it, without cultivating it, killing a 
pig now and then, hunting a little, eating tomatoes that were 
grown for them by a poor negro who would not leave them ? 
They were good people and kind masters, and yet that had not 
prevented them from selling one after another the seven children 
of that very negro. He opened the gate for you, did he not? " 



DOWN SOUTH 379 

" What ! that Httle comic personage, with hair and beard like 
gray moss, like Hchen, with a parchment face ? " 

" That very man," said the Colonel. " Now, just see what 
slavery makes of a man. He has never hated his master for 
those sales. He found, and he still finds, it quite natural that 
they should sell his sons, just as they would sell calves or suck- 
ing pigs. He loved his masters, and his masters loved him ! 
Such inhumanity is inconceivable. But be seated. I will go 
for my daughter." 

An oil painting, about one-fifth life size, somewhat clumsily 
but sincerely painted, showed Mr. Scott at twenty years of age, 
wearing his cloak of cavalryman in the Northern army. He 
was recognizable, even after half a century, with his rude figure 
of improvised officer, just the parallel, in his indomitable 
energy, of the generals of our first revolution. I had not time 
to make a more minute examination of this salon, nor to read 
the titles of the books arranged in the low bookcase ; for the 
sliding door opened and I saw the Colonel enter, pushing 
before him, with all the delicacy of a sick-nurse, a wheel-chair 
on which was seated a young woman of about thirty years of 
age. 

The sight of an irremediable infirmity, particularly when 
this infirmity is allied to youth, stirs some profound chord in 
the soul. When youth, thus attacked in its very flower, is found 
embodied in a perfectly beautiful and perfectly good creat- 
ure, this pity becomes still more poignant. Miss Ruth Scott, 
if you considered nothing but her face, had those large, deH- 
cate features which resist the action of years. Her color had 
all the brilliancy given by magnificent blood ; she had a finely 
curved mouth, in which a smile disclosed very large and very 
white teeth — like those of her father. Her eyes were clear 
blue, a little lighter than the Colonel's, telling of a very loving 
woman's heart, proud and delicate. Above her noble forehead 
grew the most opulent hair in locks of a tawny gold, thick and 



380 OUTRE-MER 

luxuriant — hair with which one might weave a glorious shim- 
mering mantle for the shoulders of a goddess. 

Alas ! the most humble and the most implacable of maladies, 
— almost too ridiculous to name for a girl of this age and of 
this splendor, — rheumatism, had deformed and knotted the 
feet, which one could not see under the shawls, in such a way 
as to render futile even an attempt at walking. Without any 
emotion she showed her hands swollen at the joints — poor, 
infirm hands which could neither guide a pen nor hold a 
needle. And, yet, a smiling resignation — nay, more than 
that, a serious, serene joy could be read upon this face, which 
one would think ought to have expressed all the melancholy 
of one destined to martyrdom. It was not long before I 
understood whence came this serenity of mind under so great 
and so incurable a misfortune. Miss Ruth had not spoken ten 
phrases before she had revealed to me the secret of her inner 
strength. Like her father, she was possessed by the idea of 
the responsibility of the people of her race toward the negroes. 
And I recognized in her at once that fervor of proselytism 
which is so difficult for a Latin to consider without some little 
suspicion. 

The history of the Anglo-Saxon race would, however, be 
inexplicable without this hereditary instinct of the missionary. 
Miss Scott was only an example of this instinct, a more touch- 
ing example than many others on account of her infirmity. I 
can still hear her slightly hard voice in which trembled the 
reproaches of a conscience always striving toward apostleship. 
And I can hear her say to me, speaking about those poor 
negroes whose happy heedlessness I had just been prais- 
ing : — 

" They are not always so. There are racial tragedies even 
to-day that you would never suspect. About ten years ago I 
was studying in Boston. One day a colored girl presented her- 
self at our college. The president had strong ideas about jus- 



DOWN SOUTH 381 

tice. She assembled us all and asked us to promise that we 
would treat the newcomer as though she were one of ourselves. 
Otherwise she would not receive her. She gave us an hour in 
which to make our decision as to whether we would give her 
this promise or not. We deliberated together. As opinion 
was divided on the question, we decided to vote and to submit 
the matter to the decision of the ballot. The result was favor- 
able to the stranger. 

" Would it not have been cruel, I ask you, to deprive her of 
a little culture on account of her blood, particularly as her 
father was a very distinguished doctor? She remained among 
us for four years. She was intelligent, as the negroes very often 
are, and scrupulously honest, which they are not always. We 
liked her very much, and even those who did not vote in her 
favor kept their promise and never let her feel that they con- 
sidered her other than as white. I suppose she was happy. 
Her father, however, died and left her without fortune. She 
had to return to Savannah to the family of her grandfather. 
There this girl, accustomed to live in the best society in the 
North, could not find a single respectable person who would 
receive her, who would even recognize her. She was com- 
pelled to mix solely with the people of her race, inferior, 
brutal, coarse, knowing themselves to be such, beings without 
instruction and without education. She suffered so much that 
she finished by a crime. She committed suicide — threw her- 
self into the water. Isn't that a tragedy, as I told you ? Is 
it not frightful?" 

" But why did she not remain in the North ? " I asked. 
"Would she not have been able to marry there?" 

" Ah, no," said the Colonel in turn, " and I understand the 
reason. Marriages between negroes and whites are not per- 
mitted in the United States, and that is right. God has not 
willed that these races should mix. The proof of this is that 
mulattoes have almost always an evil nature. No, it will not do 



382 OUTRE-MER 

to corrupt the white race by the mixture of the black. One 
must make of the negro, so long debased, a race of men who 
will be men, of citizens who will be citizens, something other 
than children or animals." 

" But are they not already Christians ? " I interrupted. 

"And good Christians," repUed Miss Ruth. "You should 
hear them sing their hymns in which they speak of Paul and 
Moses as of people whom they had once known. Sometimes 
these hymns are most exquisite poetry. Do you remember, 
father, that about the bones, with the air that so well fitted the 
beautiful words ? Suppose you sing it for Mr. ." 

" I will try," said the Colonel. He seated himself at the 
piano quite simply. When had he found leisure to learn music 
enough to play and sing so pleasantly? He began with a little 
prelude, seeking the notes with the supple fingers that had 
held the officer's sword, the doctor's lancet, the administrator's 
pen, and that I had seen only half an hour before plunging a 
pair of forceps into the mouth of a rattlesnake. He played a 
soft and gentle air, one of those subdued melodies that suggest 
the echo of a monotonous measure beaten upon a stretched 
skin during the warm nights, and the words were something 
like this : " I know that these bones are mine, that they are 
mine, and that they will be raised again upon that morning." 

What a touching phrase and how singularly significant, when 
one considers that it was invented and sung by slaves, by poor 
slaves, who, as a matter of fact, owned only the skeleton, which 
it was impossible to tear from their body to sell ! What 
wretchedness and what hope ! 

" They used to crack their heels and their knees together in 
the evenings when they sang those words around our house," 
went on Miss Scott. " If you like the songs, we will find you 
some more of them." 

" There is one song that I have never heard," I replied, 
" and that I am sure you know, Colonel ; one which, I am sure, 



DOWN SOUTH 383 

the negroes must have sung, since it was the hymn of their 
deliverance — I mean John Brown's march." 

It was not unintentionally that I asked my host, seeing that 
he was so complaisant, to sing this admirable war song, which 
has always appeared to me to be so impressive in its vigorous 
simplicity : — 

John Brown's body lies mouldering in the tomb, 
But his soul is marching on ! 

Glory, glory, hallelujah ! 

I meant this Marseillaise of the Northern army to serve 
simply as pretext for the telling of battle stories, such as old 
heroes love to recite. I had mistaken the amazing simplicity 
of this hero. He appeared a little surprised at my request, 
but turning again to the piano he sang the Warrior's Hymn. 
It is a clear-cut, bright, almost gay melody, expressing superb, 
almost jovial self-confidence and the courage that comes from 
serving a just cause. I gazed at the singer while he uttered the'^ 
words associated for him with many a bloody memory. But 
he sang the air just as it was written, with a countenance which 
showed that he liked to sing it. My mind was, neverthe- 
less, somewhat confused at his offer immediately afterward to 
sing the Southern march, " Dixie." A genuine dance air is 
this one, bright, agile, and frivolous. The Colonel evidently 
took great pleasure in recalling both marches, so much was the 
civil war a thing of another age to him ; one might say merely a 
picturesque memory of the past. 

Leaving the piano and swinging his great form in a rocking- 
chair, he said : — 

"You ought to have heard those two songs sung by thou- 
sands of soldiers on march ! They were brave men, on both 
sides, and perfect soldiers at the end. I saw the armies made, 
built up, day by day, hour by hour, like a new town. I re- 
member, toward the end, that a French officer who had wit- 



384 OUTRE-MER 

nessed one of our parades, asked : ' Now that you have this 
fine army, where are you going to begin? In Canada, or in 
Mexico ? ' " 

" ' We shall begin by sending them all back to their work,' I 
replied to him ; and that was the truth. At the end of the 
war we had twelve hundred thousand men ; six months after- 
ward, only fifty thousand," and he laughed aloud in the strength 
of his national pride. He was prouder of this disbanding than 
of twenty victories. 

" But," he said seriously, returning to his old point of view 
like a true American, " all the same, we have not done enough 
for the negroes. We ought not to have given them what we 
have given them, nor yet, on the other hand, have left them to 
themselves so completely." 

" Do you think that one can improve a race?" I broke in. 
" While I was in Canada, of which you were just speaking, near 
Montreal, I visited a village of converted Iroquois. Their 
priest assured me that it was impossible to instruct them beyond 
a certain point. There is, as it were, a hmit of culture pre- 
scribed in advance in the blood of all of us." 

" Well, one can attain that limit at least," said Miss Ruth, 
quickly. "You may change your idea perhaps, when you have 
seen the school that we have founded at PhiHppeville. I will 
show it to you one of these afternoons if you remain here a few 
days." 

When I left the Colonel we had made an appointment for 
this very visit. I was to take lunch with him, and we were to 
go to the school in company with his daughter, an ingenious 
invention perfected by him permitting her to be removed from 
her couch to a carriage. He told me his plans for the after- 
noon, as he conducted me, through his park, toward my car- 
riage. We took a different road from that by which I had 
arrived, and, as we passed before a little enclosure full of trees 
and surrounded by low walls, he said : — 



DOWN SOUTH 385 

"That is the cemetery where all the Chastins have been buried 
for one hundred and fifty years. Would you like to see their 
tombs ? Places like these are the remains of that old America 
which travellers forget so often in their studies of the new." 

We entered the cemetery. The luxuriant Southern vegeta- 
tion transformed these thirty square yards into a great mass 
of flowers. Wild jasmine, hawthorn, honeysuckle, narcissus, 
grew there in glorious confusion. Glycins climbed up the 
trees, and yellow roses, those miniature roses that are called 
bankshires, grew in large tufts among the dark cypresses. The 
gravestones were worn away by time in this garden of youth, of 
springtime, and of perfume. 

I parted the fresh branches and sweet flowers to decipher 
some of the epitaphs. The latest of the stones, put there no 
doubt by the care of Mr. Scott, was decorated with a carved 
sabre. I read the inscription on it, and saw that it was the 
tomb of the last of the Chastins, and that this last heir of the 
name was also a colonel, but in the Confederate army. Near 
by, upon another tomb, nearly hidden by vegetation, I could 
distinguish the date 1738, and the words "New Orleans." I at 
once understood that the successor of the former owners had 
had the pious idea of placing in their last repose, side by side, 
the founder of the demesne and his descendant. 

It was a pathetic thought what humanity lay in this enclosure. 
The race which here slept in its entirety had once been all 
powerful, and no one now remained to pay it homage except 
the generous enemy who had come into its inheritance, and 
the changing seasons that showered their splendors on the sad 
resting-place with that calm indifference of nature so hateful 
to us when we are young, and that we love when age begins 
to creep on. The consciousness of our littleness enables us to 
meet the inevitable defeat with a tranquil soul. Although as 
an active man, and one who has been through the war, the 
Colonel, perhaps, did not feel the same sort of emotion as I 
cc 



386 OUTRE-MER 

myself, this little mortuary oasis, which the murmur of bees 
filled with music on that sunny day, did not leave him indifferent. 
He became as silent as myself, and it was only when we had 
left the place that he recovered his spirit, and said : — 

"You noticed that the cemetery is still cared for? One of 
their old slaves has undertaken the duty. They call her Aunt 
Sarah. You will see her at our school. She looks after the 
children. Her fidelity is a tribute to the Chastins, and it 
makes the place dearer to me. Naturally there is some pleas- 
ure in the thought that one occupies a house in which have 
lived none but noble people for four or five generations. It 
makes one feel as though there were no unfortunates around. 
As a matter of fact, there are none. When you have been to 
the school, you shall visit a few of the cabins. You will see 
the happy faces of these people. A little salt pork and some 
fruit, and they are as comfortable as though they had all the 
millions of all the cottagers of Newport. However, here is 
your carriage." 

My little carriage, in fact, awaited me almost at the door 
of the cemetery. I recognized in this delicate, hospitable 
attention the graceful foresight of the invalid. The Colonel 
gave a few instructions to the coachman, and said to me. 
"On Tuesday, at one o'clock," as he shook my hand. I had 
to repress the temptation to reply to him, "Tuesday? What 
a long time ! " so great was my desire to see him soon again. 
The originality of his character,' the nobility of his daughter's 
face, the picturesque aspect of 'their residence, had inspired 
in me one of those sudden interests that professional novel- 
ists are probably the only ones to feel. The imagination is 
as if entranced with a passionate desire to know all about 
some one, to breathe the same air, to live the same life, to 
think the same thoughts. While I was travelling along the 
sandy roads toward Philippeville I hardly noticed the beauty 
of the scenery, so absorbed was I by my reflections upon these 



DOWN SOUTH 387 

two persons, who were unknown to me a few hours before. I 
admired the puritanical ardor which had distinguished their 
ancestors, and which still burned in them like an inextin- 
guishable flame. I found in their fervor of proselytism the 
influence of the pilgrims of the Mayflojver. 

I was surprised at the race prejudices which, notwithstand- 
ing this missionary zeal, made them regard as pollution the 
marriage of one of their race with the best of their black pro- 
tegees. I thought of the wealth of this man's nature, a nature 
which five or six trades, and sixty years of work, had not 
exhausted; of the sadness of his daughter's life; of the pecul- 
iarities of this country, even; of the astonishing apparition, 
for example, of Mr. Scott busily engaged in wrenching out 
the fangs of a chloroformed serpent. In fact, fifty motives 
made me desirous of seeing again as soon as possible the man 
whom I had met to-day. I little thought under what different 
circumstances I should see him on Tuesday, very far from 
the family lunch presided over by Miss Ruth, nor that I 
should take part in his company in a stranger battue than even 
a rattlesnake hunt would have been for a Parisian writer. 

It was on a Friday that I paid my visit to the Colonel. Dur- 
ing the following three days, there fell in Philippeville one of 
those rains which in hot countries seem to fill the atmosphere 
with muggy vapors, rather than to refresh it. Imprisoned in 
the hotel, I had no other distraction than to watch the water 
falling in inexhaustible cataracts and to talk with the hotel- 
keeper. I had been mischievous enough to tell him of my 
visit to the Colonel and of my encounter with one of those 
formidable reptiles of which, I believe, he would have obsti- 
nately denied the existence, even if he had seen one lift its 
head in the middle of his tennis court. 

"Oh, those niggers must have gone into Florida for it," 
replied Mr. Williams, without hesitation. "They have a per- 
fect mania for catching them alive, in order to sell them to 



388 OUTRE-MER 

some zoological garden. " He said a " zoo, " by way of abbrevi- 
ation. " Mr. Scott, who is a fine fellow, ought not to render 
them such services. He only encourages them, without taking 
into account that the serpents might awake during the opera- 
tion. But the Colonel has always been too good to the col- 
ored people. He has been ill requited several times for his 
kindness. Did he tell you that at this moment a certain 
Henry Seymour, one of his old servants, whom he had dis- 
missed for robbery, is in Philippeville prison, after having 
ravaged the entire country? He took refuge in the woods, 
after a murder, and stayed there with his Winchester. 

" He was such a good shot that he terrified all the other 
negroes, and the cowards furnished him with food, brandy, 
and cartridges. Finally he was taken. A "false friend mixed 
some opium in his whiskey and delivered him up. He was 
tried and condemned to death. Would you believe it, Mr. 
Scott was indignant at the idea that the man had been cap- 
tured by such means, and managed to obtain a postponement 
of the execution. He even went to Atlanta to obtain a re- 
prieve. He was not successful, and on Thursday this rascal 
will be hanged." 

" But the Colonel must have had other reasons, apart from 
this treachery? " 

"Oh, of course; he insisted that Seymour had been put on 
the chain gang while too young. - You have seen those men, 
in white and brown suits, who work on our roads, with chains 
at their feet. Those are our convicts. And this youth has 
gone through that experience. 'I remember him well. It is 
true he was only seventeen yeats of age, but he had already 
committed two robberies, witltout counting that for which 
Mr. Scott discharged him, although he would not have him 
arrested." ^ 

"Only seventeen years!" I replied. "It's very young, all 
the same. At that age one is very impressionable, and such 



DOWN SOUTH 389 

company is not calculated to improve a character that has 
gone wrong." 

"Well," answered Mr. Williams, "there are many who 
remain in the chain gang for a year, or two years, and even 
then begin their life afresh. When a man has paid his debt, 
we Americans regard it as really paid. This Seymour could 
have paid his in work. If he preferred to carry on in a way 
that he would have to pay for by hanging, why, all right! 
By the way, would it not interest you to be present at the 
execution? In Georgia we have not adopted electricity. We 
just stick to hanging. You can compare it with France; for 
there you have the guillotine, have you not? " 

"I have never seen it work," I replied, "and I doubt 
whether I have sufficient moral courage to stand by and see a 
man hanged." 

"In any case, I will get you a ticket from the sheriff," said 
the hotel-keeper, "and you can use it or not, just as you 
choose." 

He kept his word, and two days later — that is, on Monday 
— he announced to me that I should have the ticket. But on 
the evening of the same day he approached me again, in the 
hall of the hotel, wearing the anxious countenance of a good 
citizen who has learned bad news, and of a hotel-keeper who 
foresees some unpleasant occurrences for his guests, and said : 

"What do you think? Have you heard the news? The 
ticket that the sheriff has given us is no good. That damned 
rascal, Seymour, is not going to be executed." 

"Has Mr. Scott obtained his reprieve? " I asked. 

"No; the man has escaped. They gave him too much 
freedom in his cell. He received too many visits. Some one 
passed him a knife, and this afternoon, when the jailer took 
him his food, he took advantage of the moment when the man 
stooped to put the tray on the floor and planted the knife 
right between his shoulders. The jailer fell dead at once. 



390 OUTRE-MER 

Seymour took his revolver and his keys, freed seven negroes 
or mulattoes, prisoners like himself, but for slight offences, 
and the eight scoundrels escaped by the back door of the 
prison, which faces the country. They had the good luck to 
get away without being seen, so that their flight was only 
known two hours later. By this time they are in the woods, 
and there can be no traces of them on the roads after the heavy 
rains. Heaven knows when they Avill be retaken ! Now was 
I not right in saying that the Colonel is too easy with those 
people? If he had not demanded a postponement, Seymour 
would have been hanged last week, the jailer would still be 
living, and I should not be afraid of losing my guests. A 
family is to come next week, but if they read in the papers 
about this adventure, they will be afraid and go to St. Augus- 
tine. They will get the idea that it is not safe in Georgia," 

I was sufficiently accustomed to the newspapers so dreaded 
by Mr. Williams, and to their extraordinary accounts of daily 
happenings, to feel some astonishment at the change of plans 
of which he spoke. Apart from the larger cities, America 
still continues to be a country of daring exploits, executed 
with an audacity that recoils before no danger. On the other 
hand, I had not expected to find myself, I, a peaceable Gallo- 
Roman literary man, taking part in such a tragic history as 
this of the jail-breaking bandit. I passed the evening follow- 
ing Mr, Williams's revelations in wondering how I could bring 
the Colonel to speak to me of his old servant during our lunch- 
eon, on the following day. I had divined from a few words 
the hotel-keeper had let drop, that the philanthropic owner of 
Scott's place was very sensitive on this particular point. As 
things turned out, the Colonel spared me the trouble; for on 
the Tuesday morning, about nine o'clock, his card was brought 
up, with the message that he was downstairs and wished to 
speak to me. I found him wearing his hunting-costume, as 
on the first occasion that I had seen him, his legs thrust into 



DOWN SOUTH 391 

stout leather gaiters, and with enormously thick-soled shoes. 
He carried a rifle in his hand. 

" I came to beg you to excuse me," he said, without any 
preamble, " and to ask you to put off our luncheon to another 
day. I daresay you are aware that several prisoners have 
escaped from jail, and among them one who was condemned 
to death — in fact, a man who was formerly one of my 
servants." 

"I have heard of it," I replied, "and also that you had for- 
merly been very good to the wretched creature." 

"'That is not true," he responded ; " but in any case it is of 
no account. The important thing just at present is to re- 
capture them, in order that they may not terrorize the country. 
Immediately on their escape, we telegraphed to Atlanta for 
bloodhounds, dogs specially trained for man hunting. I have 
collected about ten of the citizens for the work, and I have 
brought you a horse, so that if you choose to come with us — " 

"Why not?" I replied, after a few minutes' hesitation. "At 
least, so long as there is no — " 

"You are afraid of some lynching scene?" interrupted the 
Colonel, who had read the fear in my eyes. " Make yourself 
easy on that point, for while I am present they would not dare. 
Have you your gun? " and, upon receiving a negative response, 
he added : " However, you will not need it. You don't 
belong to the country, and you will naturally only be with 
us as a spectator. Besides, only one of them is armed, this 
very Seymour, and he has only a No. 48 Colt. If he had his 
Winchester, I shouldn't take you along ; for he would never 
allow himself to be taken without bringing down five or six 
of us." 

Twenty minutes later, and without any further preparation, 
I was following the Colonel along one of the roads which 
traverse the immense forests of pitch-pines planted around 
Philippeville. My horse, a Kentucky animal, was trained to 



392 OUTRE-MER 

go at that gallop the Americans call " single foot," a kind of 
swift trot that covers the ground very rapidly, and which I have 
never met anywhere else. As I learned afterward, our little 
party was composed of simple shopkeepers. Except for their 
gaiters, they were dressed just as though at their counters, but 
they all wore a singularly energetic expression, and displayed a 
not less singular skill in managing their steeds. 

It was very evident that they had all at some time been 
occupied in some business which had not been without its cares 
and worries, before establishing themselves in this remote corner 
of Georgia, as grocer or as saddler, as dealer in ready-made 
clothing or as undertaker. With the exception of the Colonel 
and myself, the whole caravan was chewing tobacco. I could 
see the regular motion of the jaws, and the barrels of the rifles 
— each of them carried one — gleaming close to the faces, 
stirred with this automatic movement. Eight dogs, rather 
small in height, and undistinguishable to a novice from the 
ordinary hunting dog, went on ahead of us, around us, to right, 
to left, sniffing the air, hesitating, running, taking up the scent, 
and losing it again. 

The storm had ceased on the preceding evening, and the 
morning, after many days of torrent-like rain, was made lovely 
by a moist, bright radiance. Although the forest roads passed 
through a sandy country which had already swallowed up almost 
all the rain, so much had fallen that the low-lying portions were 
still full. The tiniest of the watercourses which descended 
toward the neighboring river had overflowed, and we had almost 
constantly to clear some brook transformed into a pond, in 
which our horses waded up to the chest. 

Almost continually, also, we had to leap over trunks which 
strewed the road. In the great forests of Georgia and Florida, 
the negroes are accustomed to draw the resin from the pitch- 
pines by notching them. The notch they cut is so deep that 
a wind storm of very slight force is quite sufficient to break 



DOWN SOUTH 393 

the tree, and a veritable tempest had been raging all through 
the region during the last two days. 

''The negroes call these fallen trees 'hurricanes,' " said the 
Colonel, in explanation of this newly felled mass, an explana- 
tion which, however, did not account for the old trunks, the 
innumerable rotting stumps, between which grew a rich, thick 
vegetation of tiny palms, showing themselves bravely or lying 
crushed to the earth. Out of this carpet of large flat leaves 
sprang great honeysuckles and flowers such as I had admired 
the other afternoon, a luxuriant mixture of pink and white, 
freshest pink and most delicate white. Colossal yellow jessa- 
mines were interlaced in the trees. Violets as large as pansies 
peeped out among the grass. The barking of the dogs, who 
were now following the trail, began to fill the spring landscape 
with a clamor that seemed to me exceedingly fantastic. 

Not being charged with the civic duties whose trace I could 
see printed upon the faces of the horsemen, who were now 
walking their steeds, their bridles twisted round their wrists, 
their eyes wide open, and their rifles in their hands, I had 
time to dream, and I was oppressed with the thought that the 
vehement bark of those ferocious animals was being heard 
with terror by seven or eight unfortunates crouched motion- 
less in the woods, or, perhaps, crushing, in their furious course, 
flowers similar to those which surrounded me; casting the 
branches to one side with frenzied arms; breathless with fear 
and panting with fatigue. At this moment the pack, which 
had again been at fault, took off along a cross road with such 
fury that they were soon lost to our view. The Colonel halted 
us. He listened for a few moments with the close attention 
of an old warrior accustomed to interpret distant sounds. 
"The dogs have stopped," he said at last. "They have got 
one of them. We had better spread ourselves out fan-like in 
order to surround them and the man." 

Acting upon his instructions, the little troop disappeared in 



394 OUTRE-MER 

a few seconds among the trees. I saw the horsemen, one after 
another, dive deeper into the gloom, the bridles hanging free 
now, and the rifles ready for use. The shrewd, intelligent 
horses appeared to go in the right direction by sheer instinct. 
The horsemen had merely to press with one of the large, 
wooden stirrups, decorated with leather, in which the foot was 
fixed in the Mexican manner, and the knowing animal turned, 
passing with sure and firm tread, through the pools of water and 
crossing the obstacles formed by large, fallen trees, which lay 
on every hand, without even brushing them with the hoof. The 
Colonel and I remained alone. We began to advance in the 
direction whence came the barking, but we had not ridden 
in this way more than two hundred yards before we had to 
slacken our pace. The river, one of these little watercourses, 
almost without name, of which hundreds flow in that region, 
and which are about as large as the Adige or the Po, had over- 
flowed its banks. Its muddy waters flooded the portion of the 
forest where we were now marching. The Colonel went on in 
front of me. " I know the route a little," he said, " and there's 
less chance that my horse will break its leg in some hole." 

I could see him about a neck in advance of me, his body 
so supple, notwithstanding his age, upon his stout steed. Now 
and again he would turn and stoop as though to gather up 
into one ear the full significance of the disturbance coming 
from the place toward which we were riding. I could see his 
profile at such times, a resolute, serious profile, but wearing 
an expression of sadness that I was beginning to read both by 
the light of the hotel-keeper's indiscretions, and by that given 
me by his own character. At that very moment, engaged in 
doing his duty as a good citizen in hunting down a brigand, 
he could see again, without doubt, that same brigand just as 
he was when in his service, a mere boy, almost a child. The 
contrast was too great between the day that he had discharged 
Seymour from his house, after a first escapade, and the pres- 



DOWN SOUTH 395 

ent time, when he was conducting a troop charged with the 
duty of tracking his old servant, now an outrageous malefactor, 
through these inundated woods. With the idea of responsi- 
bility proper to the old Puritan, it was impossible that the 
Colonel should not contrast these two episodes, impossible 
that he should not say to himself, " I might, perhaps, have 
averted this destiny if I had been less severe." 

I could read the cares of a troubled conscience upon that 
strong countenance, side by side with the natural tension of 
the soldier lying in ambush. All at once the complex expres- 
sion of the martial visage became more intense. The Colonel 
again stopped his horse, his hands again gripped his rifle, 
which he brought to his shoulder with terrible deliberation. 
I stooped almost to the neck of my animal, and through the 
foliage of the pitch-pines I could see the shore of the river, 
recognizable in this enormous flood only by the abrupt cessa- 
tion of vegetation. I could see the dogs swimming upon the 
sheet of reddish water. I could see their three wide-open 
jaws collected threateningly round the head of a man. With 
one arm the unfortunate creature was swimming, with the 
other he held a pistol out of the water. Slowly, almost im- 
perceptibly, he advanced, fighting against the current and 
trying to reach a submerged bridge, of which the iron cable 
was still visible five or six yards away. It was the only chance 
that he had of crossing that terrible river. You could measure 
the force of its current by three logs that went drifting by. 
It was a miracle that the swimmer had not been struck by one 
of them; a miracle that he had gained even that little dis- 
tance. He must have been fighting in this way a long time, 
and yet he did not lose courage ! When the pack surrounded 
him too closely, terribly united and howling, but without 
biting him, he v,rould strike at the muzzles of the dogs with 
the butt end of his revolver. The furious blow would drive 
back the living barrier of implacable jaws and would thus 



396 OUTRE-MER 

leave him sufificient room to enable him to make a little more 
headway. It was easy to see that he was keeping his weapon 
intact for a more important occasion, if he was compelled to 
abandon his one hope of safety. 

There was in this desperate combat against such opposing 
forces, against the elements, against animals, against men, 
something so courageous and so hopeless that it oppressed the 
heart. We were so close to the man that I could see with 
extreme clearness the expression of his face. It was a mu- 
latto's face, rather yellow than brown, a nearer neighbor of 
white blood than the negro's. His hair was not kinky, it 
was even hardly curly. The nose, instead of being flat, was 
aquiline. What family had bequeathed this aristocratic face 
to this robber, this murderer? From whom had this Henry 
Seymour descended ? For it was Seymour. If any doubt had 
remained in my mind after the description the hotel-keeper 
had given me, the Colonel's agitation would have dissipated 
it. His rifle continued to remain at his shoulder, but his 
finger did not press the trigger. Even had it touched it, it is 
not probable that the ball would have struck the mark, so great 
was the trembling of the old man's arm, now that he was aim- 
ing at his old servant. Finally the rifle barrel was raised 
without having been fired, and I heard Mr. Scott say aloud, 
as if he had been alone : — 

*' No, I cannot shoot him so ! " 

He spurred his horse. The water was so deep now that 
the Colonel was in it to above the knee. He could go no 
further without swimming, but he was upon the edge of the 
forest and there were no trees before him. He cried out, and 
the swimmer turned. I saw the revolver that the fugitive con- 
tinued to hold out of the water aimed at the Colonel, and then 
begin to rise just as. the Colonel's rifle had done. Seymour 
had recognized Mr. Scott, and he did not fire. This hesitation 
to commit murder was so completely unexpected in a profes- 



DOWN SOUTH 397 

sional murderer, and under such circumstances, that even at 
that moment and in the fever caused by such an adventure I 
could not help feeling astonishment. The man must have felt 
for his master a very strange sentiment of veneration to refuse 
to fire, he a man who had already spilled so much blood. Or 
could it be that he had seen the Colonel's gesture of a few 
minutes ago, and, being certain that he would not fire, 
thought it was useless to waste one of his five shots? Or, 
again, could it be that this excellent marksman recognized 
the impossibility of aiming accurately while swimming as he 
was? I shall never know the secret motive that prompted 
this scene, which passed with such tragic rapidity. 

Standing up in his stirrups, thus making a still more promi- 
nent target of his huge frame, the Colonel cried, with a voice 
that dominated the furious barkings of the dogs, the tumult of 
the water, and the rustling of the forest: — 

"Come, Henry, my boy, you see it's no use! You'll have 
to give up. There are seven other rifles after you, and they'll 
be here in five minutes." 

The man shook his head without replying. Then, as though 
the presence of his enemies had given him new strength, he 
fired at one of the dogs with the muzzle close to the animal. 
It howled with pain, and the other dogs hung back. Then, 
judging that his weapon could not serve him any longer, he 
dropped it into the water in order to dive and swim with both 
arms. 

" He's going to escape," said the Colonel, whose clear eyes 
became fixed. 

He again shouldered his rifle, and I felt that this time he 
would not hesitate. This heroic effort of citizenship was, how- 
ever, spared him. When Seymour's head came up in the river, 
he was quite close to the bridge, sufficiently close, in fact, to 
seize the cable. In another moment we saw him dive and 
reappear on the other side of it. Perhaps if he had once got 



398 OUTRE-MER 

upon the bridge and had gone on diving while walking, he 
might have escaped. But the instinct to stretch his limbs 
after such an effort made him stand erect the instant he felt 
his feet posed upon the planks. His chest appeared above the 
water, and that very moment two shots went off at our right, 
fired by two of the hunters. One of the balls struck the 
mulatto in the shoulder, and we saw his arm drop limp and 
inert. The other crashed against the iron cord of the cable, 
glanced off, and struck the fugitive in the head. He raised his 
unwounded hand to his forehead and then reeled. The few 
movements that he made to grasp anew the iron cable were 
a mere convulsive, instinctive effort. He felt himself fainting, 
and disappeared under the water. But the Colonel had already 
forced his horse into the stream and had begun swimming. 
He gained the side of the wounded man, whom he raised with 
his powerful arm and brought to shore. 

A quarter of an hour later the entire troop, attracted by the 
shots, had assembled with us around the still fainting man. 
The dogs slipped between the legs of the horses, trying to smell 
and lick the bloody cloths with which Mr. Scott was wiping the 
two wounds, which were but slight, received by the unfortunate 
wretch. We learned later that, in the hope of putting ofT his 
execution, he had pretended to be ill, and had refused to eat for 
several days. That was the real cause of his defeat. Had he 
been more robust, he would not have been so much retarded. 
He would have crossed the bridge, as his comrades had done, 
two hours before our arrival, and once in the other part of the 
forest he would have found, as they did, a line of railroad, and 
like them, without doubt, would have clambered on to a train in 
motion, like professional tramps. 

Before long Henry Seymour began to recover his senses. At 
the first effort he made to rise, one of the men drew his revolver, 
while two others seized the wounded man by the legs and tied 
them firmly. He, however, did not make any fresh attempt 



DOWN SOUTH 399 

at useless resistance. The ball which had glanced off the cable 
had struck him in the arch of the eyebrow, and had cruelly 
wounded all the left side of the forehead and the eyelid so that 
only the right eye was capable of being opened. But the furious 
glance he gave with this single eye was so ferocious as his gaze 
wandered around our circle that one of the huntsmen replied to 
his silent defiance by a word involuntarily spoken aloud : — 

" It's too late, man," he said simply. 

Seymour did not appear to have heard him. It was the 
Colonel he was looking at now, with quite another expression. 
The brown eyes had taken on again their look of soft, humid 
sweetness. I expected, from the nature of his look, to hear some 
strangely touching expression, but I had misread the animal sim- 
plicity of such a nature. All that the wounded man felt in the 
way of sentiment for Mr. Scott resulted solely in this demand, 
which he addressed to him directly, as though he would not 
deign to speak to any one else : — 

" Give me something to drink. Colonel ; I am so thirsty. 
Won't you give me something to drink? " 

There was something so coaxing, so almost infantine in the 
voice with which he spoke to his old master, that it recalled 
the petting of which he had once been the object. Mr. Scott 
drew a flask from his pocket, uncorked it, and put the mouth 
to the lips of the prisoner, holding up his head as he did so. 
Seymour swallowed several mouthfuls greedily. His eye began 
to glisten more caressingly, and, with that versatility of feeling 
which equals in those singular beings their suppleness of move- 
ment, he smiled with pleasure as if he had quite forgotten his 
rage of only a few minutes ago, his crime of the preceding 
evening, his wild flight of this morning, his wounds and the 
certainty of his dark future. 

" Ah ! It's the same whiskey that we used to drink when 
hunting together," he said, smacking his lips. " He beats 
everybody, does my Colonel." 



400 OUTRE-MER 

"And now," responded the latter, " you're going to be quiet 
and let me dress your wounds." 

"Will you give me some more whiskey afterward? " asked 
Seymour. 

" Yes, you shall have some." 

" And one of your cigars, Colonel?" 

" And one of my cigars." 

" All right," said the mulatto, holding out, without any resist- 
ance, first his head and then his arm. Mr. Scott had brought 
with him a complete little field case of surgeon's instruments. 
He displayed all the skill of an old surgeon in cleansing and 
binding up the two wounds, while the soldier in him was dis- 
played in a desire to clear up a certain point that had remained 
obscure to him, a desire that made him ask : — 

" How is it that you did not cross the river yester- 
day?" 

" Because we went to the Georgetown bridge, Colonel," 
replied the other, "and the waters had carried it away. There 
was only one of two things to be done — either to go down 
the river to the Berkeley Farms bridge, twenty miles lower 
down, or to come up to this one. As we knew the roads 
better, we chose this route, but we were wrong. How is it, 
though. Colonel, that you thought we should come in this 
direction?" 

" I knew the Georgetown bridge had been carried away," said 
Mr. Scott, " and I calculated that you would reason exactly as 
you have done. You said to yourself, ' They don't believe that 
we would be audacious enough to come so close to the town.' 
But it's not daring you're short of, Henry, or courage. Now 
that the dressing is finished, is there anything more I can do 
for you?" 

" Send me a bottle of your whiskey to the prison," replied 
Seymour. " And get permission from the sheriff for me to 
finish it before I have to swing." 



DOWN SOUTH 401 

Events such as those I had just witnessed are not very ex- 
traordinary in PhiHppeville, in a city where they do not recol- 
lect having passed a year without one or two lynchings. 
Ordinary life, therefore, resumed its course at once, and on 
the very evening of that dramatic day, when I went to buy 
some Richmond tobacco, I recognized in the grocer who sold 
it to me one of the horsemen with whom I had scoured the 
forest in search of Henry Seymour. He was chewing his quid 
with the usual impassible phlegmatic air, and we made no 
more allusion to our adventure than two Parisians meeting 
again at their club in the afternoon would speak of the bows 
they had exchanged at the Bois in the morning. 

In fact, the incident appeared to have made a profound 
impression only upon Mr. Williams ; for he did not hesitate 
to display a pleasure that appeared to me almost indecent, 
although he justified it by a quaint, business-like admission. 

" Those people from New York, of whom I spoke to you, 
will be here the day after to-morrow. I telegraphed to them 
the moment Seymour was recaptured. They must have re- 
ceived the news of his arrest as soon as they heard of his 
flight, and they replied to me in this telegram, announcing 
their arrival. Ah, I was rather afraid. By the way, it appears 
that Seymour is not wounded so badly as to prevent his execu- 
tion to-morrow (Thursday), as it was previously decided." 



X 

DOWN SOUTH 

II. /// Florida 

Between Jacksonville and Lake Worth, along that low penin- 
sula — often lower than the sea itself — with all the lagoons, 
lakes, and rivers lying between us and the Everglades, and 
further away the Antilles, I saw landscapes filled with an almost 
tropical vegetation of a never-to-be-forgotten luxuriance. An 
entire civiHzation is delineated in this country, whose first pos- 
sessors, the Seminole Indians, had not been conquered half a 
century ago. The massacre of Dr. Henry Perrine on one of 
the islands or keys — those breakwaters of the peninsula — 
occurred on August 7, 1840, and the first traveller, a New 
Yorker, who explored the Okeechobee, one of the great lakes 
of the interior, reached there in 1880. Even now an expedi- 
tion off the railway lines which lead to Tampa, on the Gulf of 
Mexico, and to Palm Beach, on the Atlantic coast, would entail 
immense difficulties. This does not prevent a large number of 
young North Americans, fond of hunting, yachting, fishing, and, 
above all, of free life, from visiting each spring and winter these 
almost inaccessible parts of the peninsula with the floral name. 
The reader who may wish to follow the tourist's diary in which 
I here transcribe the various trips, will find in it the description 
of a perfectly easy and modest excursion. Had I possessed the 
talent to evoke in these pages the horizons on which I feasted 
my eyes during the three weeks of spring which I passed in 
this astonishing country, I should have given the impression 

402 



DOWN SOUTH 403 

which I still retain of that Eastern America — ihe impression 
of a mosaic, of a sudden change from the land of the factory 
and of industry to the most untouched and the most virginal 
realm of nature ! What must that Western shore be, that 
Southern California which stretches from San Francisco to Los 
Angeles and further south ? And how am I to console myself 
for not having had, in these ten months of travel, the time to go 
there ? The Americans are indeed right when thay talk of the 
large scale upon which their country is established. It is but 
too large ! 

Jacksonville, Easter Day, 1894. 

A town of quite small houses, with dusty streets, and all 
along their wooden sidewalks trees of magic and exuberant 
verdure, a lavish leafage which the dust has been unable to 
sully. Persian lilacs, like those whose perfume I breathed in 
the East, stand in the very street, gigantic, in full bloom, and 
perfuming the heated air ; then there are overladen orange 
trees, Japanese medlars, also yellow with fruit, bananas, palm 
trees, all of which foreshadow a different world from that of 
Georgia. A subtle aroma seems to pass through the sun which 
shines in the intensely blue sky, like that which overhung the 
Dead Sea last year, when, on leaving the grim convent of Mar 
Saba, I perceived that still water and the soft line of the moun- 
tains of Moab. But history and legend were mingled yonder 
with the feeling of nature. Here it is nature alone with which 
I come in contact, nature with its murderous fauna, its violent 
flora, its atmospheric phenomena, rather its cataclysms, charm 
and danger, at once perceptible in the very air one breathes, in 
every small detail which we meet at the corner of the street, in 
the sudden alternations of temperature, in fact, in the entire 
life of this small town, so peaceful on this Easter morning. 

Negroes and still more negroes. It seems as if the town 
belong to them entirely, so densely do they throng on the side- 



404 OUTRE-MER 

walks, the men in Prince Albert coats, with flowers in their 
buttonholes and wearing trousers of light shades, the women 
clothed in outrageously bright-colored dresses, among which 
those of apple green, poppy red, and light pink predominate. 
Their bodices are cut in " Figaro " fashion, their hats are 
decorated with ribbons and enormous flowers, and their hair is 
plaited in plaits which are very thin and very tight, the object 
being to diminish or destroy the natural crinkling. They smile, 
showing their white teeth between their thick lips. The white 
teeth of the men are displayed in a similar smile, and they all 
salute and approach one another with that ceremonious famil- 
iarity, that sort of natural affectation which is peculiar to this 
strange race. A group dressed in white pass along an avenue. 
They are converts who have just been baptized in the river ! 
All these people are glad that they are alive on this warm April 
Sunday. I follow some, who press forward toward a crowded 
church, and through a door I see the usual mixture of conflict- 
ing colors in the dresses of the women as they listen to the 
sermon of a famous preacher. The voice of the black clergy- 
man, standing at the end on a platform, comes to me over this 
multicolored sea. He is in a fever of excitement, his eyes 
showing their whites and rolling convulsively. He has just 
depicted hell with the eloquence of an untaught visionary, and 
now he is announcing salvation and offering Christ as a quack 
offers a remedy: "Do you take Christ?" The costumes, 
the religion, the smiles, the attention, suggest to me by strong 
contrast what these people were in their savage state, and I 
am impressed with the singular game of fate, the amazing irony 
of events which makes us all workers together for results that 
we never purposed. In contrast with this American town, filled 
with those happy negroes, those "ladies" and those "gentle- 
men " of color, as the whites call them with polite irony, who 
benefit by the railroads built by the whites, by the tramways 
invented by those whites, by the telephone organized by those 



DOWN SOUTH 405 

whites, and by the justice and the laws elaborated by those 
whites, a vision rises up before me of far-away torrid Africa, 
fifty or a hundred years back, with its leaf-huts under a burn- 
ing sun, its kings practising human sacrifice, its bestial, idola- 
trous, and perilous existence. Then comes the negro dealer, 
and the next step is taken in the transportation of the grand- 
fathers and the ancestors of these folk in the hold of a ship ! 
Those ebony wood dealers have proved to be the benefactors 
of the families whose founders they thus transported to this 
Southern country before the war ruined their traffic. They 
thought they were making slaves, and they were making citi- 
zens of free America. P'rom time to time history shows such 
double-faced ironies, as though to prove to us that we are 
puppets in the hands of an invisible Author, who constructs the 
tragedy of the universe according to His own ideas. Our good 
intentions end in miserable results, just as was the case with 
those worthies of 1789, who believed that they were decreeing 
fraternity, but who were really preparing the " Terror." 



St, Augustine, March 30. 

The hotel life of America does not resemble any other. 
You should go to St. Augustine if you would understand to 
what extent these hard workers enjoy it, how much they ex- 
pect of it, and how much it meets their innermost personal 
characteristics. At this moment, although the end of the win- 
ter season is at hand, the traveller can scarcely find room in 
these palace-like buildings, one of which resembles the Alcazar, 
another the Alhambra, a third the Escurial, a fourth a vast 
house of the colonial period. And all is on a scale of extrav- 
agant luxury which all the travellers visibly enjoy. Unlike cas- 
ual visitors in the large hotel of a European watering-place, 
these people feel as much at ease in these sumptuous halls, in 
these magnificent palaces, amid these plushes and these paint- 



406 OUTRE-MER 

Ings as they would at home — even more than at their own 
homes. Many come from new towns in the centre and on the 
border of the West. Their fortunes, recent as those towns, 
have roused in them a desire for luxury and comfort which this 
hotel satisfies grossly but easily. The grossness they do not 
feel, and they delight in the ease. You should see them dur- 
ing the day, rocking themselves on their chairs to the sound of 
the orchestra, which, from one to three o'clock and from eight 
to ten, makes the vast building vibrate. After dinner a ball is 
organized, and they all dance. 

You see men of seventy taking their places in the quadrille, 
a grandmother polkaing beside her granddaughter, and young 
people waltzing with the incomparable lightness of the young 
people over here. The movement of these dances, the rapid 
rhythm of the steps, which are really danced and not walked, 
betray a physical ardor, an ardor for pleasure equal to the ardor 
for work. All these people are in full dress ; young men are 
introduced to young ladies by other youths ; laughing groups 
gather everywhere — on the stairs, on the terraces — there is 
in the air a good fellowship that would make you believe that 
these people have known each other for years were it not for 
the introductions continually taking place around you. The 
"very glad to meet you" of these travellers, who cordially 
shake hands, though this morning they did not know one 
another, gives you the impression of a railway station, at which 
the tourists of an entire train have been suddenly introduced 
with no distinction of persons. 

RocKLEDGE, April 2. 

Almost immediately below St. Augustine the landscape 
changes. The palmetto, which crept along the ground as 
undergrowth, becomes higher. It first reaches the height of a 
child, then of a man, then twice that of a man. Its colonnades 
close up. Strange trees appear, the trunks of which spring 



DOWTSr SOUTH 407 

from huge bulbs like that of a gigantic orchid. The orange 
groves multiply, becoming vaster and broader, and the burning 
atmosphere reveals the near approach of the tropics. But 
American energy does not seem to be affected by the chmate. 
This South has nothing of the South in it, except its vegetation 
and its light. The stern, energetic race is just as intent as ever 
on the great struggle. Cars loaded with fruits follow one 
another on the railroad, as numerous as were the cars filled 
with meat in the neighborhood of Chicago. Here, however, 
they are ventilated, while the others were frozen. One sees 
the plains brought under cultivation and covered with oranges, 
not indigenous to the country. Not much more than twenty 
years ago the people bethought themselves of planting them on 
this soil, and already the orange trade of Florida threatens that 
of Spain and Sicily. As in the West, small towns spring up 
beside the railway, and land speculation extends all along the 
line. I am told that at Lake Worth, where I shall be the day 
after to-morrow, one of the magnates of this company suddenly 
built in the wilderness a hotel which is a palace, and then 
extended the line to reach his hotel, and that a winter resort is 
in course of growth out there as by enchantment. Here again 
you find that infatuation for Europe, which in this people 
always mingles with the intense originality of their spirit of 
enterprise. The idea of giving to their country a Riviera 
haunts these great Florida speculators, and they have suc- 
ceeded, but without being able to give their coast that dainty 
flower of cosmopohtan worldliness, that which forms the charm 
of our Provence, nor the beauty of the environs of Genoa, that 
home of the finest museums and churches of divine Italy. But 
if Florida has not the elegance of Cannes, nor the fetes of Nice, 
nor the enchantment of art, what landscapes, what nature she 
has ! 

I walked this evening on the edge of the Indian River, 
which I shall descend to-morrow. It is a long lagoon, six 



408 OUTRE-MER 

miles broad in certain places and fifty feet at others. A slip of 
land, stretching out indefinitely, separates it from the ocean, 
and it thus extends along the entire peninsula, lapping the quiet 
beaches of the winter resorts, such as the one at which I have 
stopped to-day. It was five o'clock. The sun was sinking in 
the west, enveloping the luxuriant vegetation in a sort of quiv- 
ering luminous dust. 

I was following between the palms the path which leads 
along the shore. Those beautiful trees were growing up on all 
sides, not in clumps as in the oases of the East, but like a forest, 
the gigantic trunks ending in large full green sprays, which the 
wind moved with a metallic murmur. Between those im- 
mense trunks, which looked as though padded with a woven 
bark, immense plants of a scent unknown to me rose out of 
thickets covered with full-blown flowers, red and bluish, — flow- 
ers twice as large as a lily, that looked as if made of cloth or of 
silk velvet. Green oaks were mingled with those flowers, in- 
terspersed with palms smothered in a network of pale green 
creepers. At times, at some spot during the walk, a vista 
would suddenly open up and reveal an orange grove, with the 
golden fruit shining amid the lustrous leaves. The water of 
the lagoon quivered under the movement of the tide which 
through a neighboring gully made itself felt even here. It 
rippled against the shore amid those standing trees and against 
the fallen trunks, with a rhythmical monotony in which was 
a palpitation like the breathing of the ocean, out of sight 
behind yonder protecting shp of land. 

They call it " Fairyland," a term calling up old recollections 
of the lands of fogs — of Ireland, of Scotland — whence have 
come so many of the colonists estabhshed here. Light yawls 
glided about on the surface of the lagoon, broad of hull and 
high of sail ; they were full of wind now — a warm wind, a 
languid and ardent breath. All along the road was a suc- 
cession of cottages, their covered verandas all facing the forest. 



DOWN SOUTH 409 

Here a sick woman was swinging in a hammock. There a 
youth with a faded complexion was reading and dreaming. 
It was a scene of nature where one could die gently, not caring 
to fight any more, longing to be absorbed, rocked, put to sleep. 
Thinking of the sharp winter of Boston and New York, with 
its snow and sleighs, I felt how large this land is, how it touches 
at both extremes of climate. Realizing the vastness of this 
continent, I asked myself again if, the conquest once estabhshed, 
— it is so recent, — the American will allow himself to be im- 
pressed with this diversity of climate, and if he will create for 
himself a gentler civilization in these States, one more analogous 
to this light and beauty. And, as though in ironical reply, I 
perceived at a turn in the road a drawing-room car going at 
full speed among the trees, and on the trunk of a palm tree, 
lighted up by the rays of the setting sun, I saw a board upon 
which I read that a certain mineral spring is the " Czar of Table 

Waters ! " 

On the Indian River, April 3. 

I resume this diary on a boat of singular form which is 
descending toward the military post of Jupiter, whence the 
railroad takes me to Lake Worth. The lower part is a sort 
of raft, manned by a unique crew composed entirely of blacks. 
Piles start out of it, supporting a kind of deck, and above that 
is a bridge. In the space between the deck and the bridge 
there is a large dining-room. Small cabins open out from it 
on both sides. The wheel, which slowly propels this construc- 
tion, is behind, made both for these waters, which are deep, 
and for others where the flat bottom of the raft rubs constantly 
against the sandy bottom. I shall without doubt be one of the 
last to descend the lagoon in this fashion ; for the railroad will 
soon be opened between Titusville and Jupiter, so that we 
shall be able to go from New York to Lake Worth without 
changing cars. The captain, an American of the Southern 
States, who has much Spanish and French blood, with the 



410 OUTRE-MER 

clever little face of an inhabitant of Tarbes or of Pau, and with 
inexpressibly aristocratic, yet simple, manners, shows me the 
rails on the banks, and says to me : " Whenever you see a 
railroad sleeper, you see the tomb of a steamboat man." The 
railroad will go quicker. The traveller will avoid a long day 
of eight to ten hours on the turns of the river. But the railroad 
will never give him the same knowledge of the river. 

First of all, immediately after embarking at Fort Pierce, 
there is a broad expanse of water shut in on the left by the 
narrow, wooded strip of land which separates it from the sea. 
Scarcely a trace of cultivation is to be seen either to the left 
or to the right, where the mainland stretches out, but in most 
places is that luxuriant vegetation which has increased con- 
tinually ever since we left Rockledge. The closer the banks, 
the more we perceive the inextricable matting of the branches. 
There is a certain tree, the trunk of which serves as a crown 
to roots exposed above the water, which are twisted like an 
enormous knot of serpents. One might say that they were the 
motionless feelers of a monstrous animal, the body of which 
would be formed by the trunk of the tree, which was pumping 
the water greedily, insatiably, by its fifty parched mouths. 
Beside it are palms, nearly all burned and reddened. Grasses 
and briers interlace and form colossal thickets twice the height 
of a man, where one would imagine the most formidable 
beasts must lie in wait. At the place where the river becomes 
narrow, the great voice of the ocean is heard. All at once 
it appears above the line of trees, immense and blue, a sap- 
phire blue, a lapis blue, with a trace on that intense azure of a 
large almost purple vein, so violet is it. It is the Gulf 
Stream, that mysterious flow of hot water through the cold 
depths of the Atlantic. Enormous waves break in crests of 
white foam upon the beach, all of which we see from the 
bridge of the boat, so thin and low is the preserving slip of 
land at this point. It is broken, and a gully appears, through 



DOWN SOUTH 411 

which the high waves hurl themselves, stopped at once by an 
island of yellow sand, upon which there are thousands of sea- 
gulls and pelicans. The noise of the wheel of our approach- 
ing boat frightens them away. A whirlwind of scattered wings 
whitens the sky, \/here the black spots made by the long- 
legged waders disappear less quickly. I hear the prolonged 
cry of the seagulls, like that of a sick child, a wail so human 
that it is painful. 

Lake Worth, April 4. 

I arrived at Lake Worth yesterday evening after nightfall. 
Here, again, is one of those impressions of contrast, such as 
America alone can give — a corner of the world. A corner of 
a peninsula very far from towns large or small, without vil- 
lages, without cultivation even, the whole extent a dangerous 
and inaccessible solitude, until, all at once, through the whim 
of a railroad owner, a hotel is built which is a palace. I see 
the one, of which much had been said, filling a break on the 
horizon with its enormous and luminous mass; beyond it a 
large sheet of water, wherein trembles the reflection of a sky 
brilliant with stars. The train has stopped at the edge of 
Lake Worth, this vast salt pond which bathes Palm Beach yon- 
der, the beach of palms where that fantastic hotel is situated. 
A pleasure boat, a trim steamer, furnished with extraordinary 
caprice, comes to meet us, and, after some manoeuvring, exe- 
cuted somewhat at random on this dark water, to avoid here 
a sand bank, there the piles of a future jetty, we see the 
palace, as luxurious as though it stood in New York on the 
sidewalks of Fifth Avenue, with its colonnaded entrance, 
lighted by electricity and perforated with elevators. Its hall 
is filled with men and women in ball dresses, who are dancing 
wildly, and who show complexions burnt by the torrid sun of 
the day, by the long hours spent on the sandy beach, and the 
baths in that surf, which is so close by and which the Gulf 



412 OUTRE-MER 

Stream warms like the Mediterranean in summer. From 
time to time a couple of dancers come upon the terrace to 
breathe in the soft, tropical night, and lazily they suck oranges, 
which everywhere fill large baskets, perfuming the atmosphere 
with a sweet aroma, while the breeze coming from over the 
gardens wafts on to the terrace and into the hall the odors of 
countless flowers. 

What a country to be happy in, after the manner of a plant 
that grows in the sun, unmindful and without desire to be 
elsewhere ! In opening my window in the morning, I see, 
between the lake and the house, a forest of cocoanut trees. 
The fruit appears in the middle of the leaves, hung in bunches, 
and each is as large as a child's head. In going toward the 
ocean just now, I inhaled the perfume of a rose-laurel wood, 
which a tramway, drawn by a single horse, crosses for a mile. 
The carriage in passing brushes the beautiful trees with their 
flesh-colored flowers, and, as the people have not even trimmed 
the branches, we tear and destroy living flowers. But this 
vegetation is so rank that the damage will be repaired to- 
morrow. A warm odor and a sense of growth which inebri- 
ates, exhales from these trees and from these grasses, from 
these fields of pineapples, and forests of cocoanut trees. 
Nature is at one and the same time too violent and too soft. 
The sea at the end of this alley of rose-laurels is too blue. It 
is no longer the wild ocean, it is the Mediterranean, the vo- 
luptuous, the feminine — . But no. We look closer, and the 
colossal swelling of the waves shows that it is the great and 
powerful Atlantic. Over that azure there passes again the 
great dark artery of the Gulf Stream, and we notice gigantic 
forms of fishes as they sport in the blue and violet tints of the 
billows. They are sharks. Their presence does not prevent 
the young Americans from bathing on that free beach. I hear 
one say to another who hesitates, "Go, and run your risk." 

That saying contains an entire philosophy. 



DOWN SOUTH 413 

April 7. 

I am going to leave to-morrow, at sunrise, this adorable 
oasis of gardens thrown in between this lagoon and the Atlan- 
tic, being bound for New York; thence, by one of the "ocean 
greyhounds " I shall go to Liverpool and then to France. 



XI 

HOMEWARD 

At Sea, Aboard the , April, 1894. 

Another fifteen days in New York to classify my notes, to 
verify some of them, to rei^isit places which I had visited 
before, to speak with people whom I had already known, — 
in short, to bid an adieu, not without regret, to this land, 
which is really so captivating, since one breathes here at every 
moment the breath of liberty, — all this has been done, and 
here I am once more on the Atlantic, on board an English 
steamer this time, and one which is quicker than the steamer 
in which I "crossed the pond" — as the Yankees familiarly 
say — last August. We left New York on Saturday morning; 
to-day is Wednesday, and to-morrow, Thursday, we shall be 
at Queenstown, in Ireland, and the day after to-morrow, Fri- 
day, in Liverpool. When the Anglo-Saxons take upon them- 
selves to vie with one another, their keenness of competition 
knows no impossibilities. The other boat was 11,500 tons 
register; this one registers 13,000 tons. The engines of the 
other were of 20,000 horse power; the engines of this one 
have a horse power of 30,000. The former was 580 feet long, 
this one is 620 feet. 

And just as, on the other, we were practically on Ameri- 
can soil, so, on this, we are already in England. I recognize 
it by twenty small signs; by the politeness and the exactness 
of the attendants; by the somewhat heavy and dark look of 
the drawing-rooms, which have no resplendent gorgeousness of 
plush and nickel; by the economy of the table, not weighted 

414 



HOMEWARD 415 

with the innumerable dishes of American prodigality. But 
when we are returning from so long a journey, we no longer 
have the heart to take pleasure in observations of this descrip- 
tion. The harvest of strange sensations is reaped. What 
germs this journey to America may have sown in me; what 
profound modifications contact with that civilization, so full 
of life and so different from ours, may have made in my 
thoughts, 1 know not. In turning over this diary, I find that, 
above all things, I was going to seek in the United States 
light as to the future, foreshadowed by those three great and 
inevitable powers which are transforming the Old World, 
namely, Democracy, Science, and the Race question. I have, 
in fact, seen at work an immense democracy, which has caused 
a scientific spirit to penetrate, in the form of industry, into the 
smallest detail of life, and, in the form of education, into the 
soul of its soul. I have seen living, side by side, blacks and 
whites, Germans and Irish, Chinamen and Scandinavians, 
Italians and Anglo-Saxons. What hypotheses has that sight 
induced me to form, by analogy, as to the morrow of our own 
civilization? 

By analogy? But can any analogy be established? Has 
what we understand among us by democracy anything in com- 
mon with the form of civilization which the Americans have 
established in their vast Republic? Yes, if we merely busy 
ourselves with that vague programme which Lincoln — and 
Napoleon, also, by the way — formulated in these terms : 
" For the people and by the people." No, if, on the one side, 
we look at the general spirit of the country, and, on the 
other, at the customs which that spirit is working out in 
France, that country among the great States of Europe which 
believes itself to be the most advanced on the path of reform, 
we shall find that the word "democracy " signifies that all the 
powers of the State are delegated to the representatives of 
the people, that is to say, to the majority. And, however 



416 OUTRE-MER 

oppressive, however unjust, may be the measures taken by 
those representatives, the moment that they meet the desire 
of the greater number, we consider them not only legal, but 
democratic. Thus conceived, democracy consists in the 
constant sacrifice of the individual to the community. 

But it is precisely in the contrary sense that American 
democracy works. It is toward the more intense, the more 
complete development of the individual that it has striven 
until now, to the diminution, to the suppression, if it were 
possible, of the influence of the State. On arriving at New 
York, what strikes the stranger? The individual energy, the 
spirit of enterprise, manifested everywhere, and visibly with- 
out control. If he begins, as I did, the study of the country 
from the top, from that part of society which entertains and 
amuses itself, what characteristic strikes him first? It is the 
application of the same energy to social elegancies, the result 
of which gives the European visitor that continuous feeling of 
"too much," of abuse, of exaggeration. It is, again, the 
energy and the robust development of the individual which 
form the characteristic of the American woman and the young 
girl. It is also by energy and individuality that the man of 
business is distinguished in this country, and the feebler 
individualities of his employees, in their struggle against him, 
have no other resource than to associate themselves for the 
purpose; or, in other words, they can do nothing but defend 
themselves, without asking anything of the State. 

It is again by energy and individuality that the people of 
the rough and savage West maintain themselves. The energy 
of individuality and the spirit of enterprise are taught in the 
schools of the most refined part of the country, — in other 
words, in New England, — and these schools, moreover, are 
all founded by individual generosity or municipal generosity, 
which comes to the same thing. This feature is so essential 
that it is found again in the pleasures of the Americans, all of 



HOMEWARD 417 

which are in harmony with purposed and personal action, and 
it is so profound that it resists the weakening influence of 
climate. Constantly, in the South, you meet with a living 
testimony of that Northern activity, and you find that it is 
invincible even near the tropics. Such, at least, is the resum^ 
of the brief inquiry which I made in my too short journey 
through that immense Republic. Conceived and practised in 
that way, democracy results, not as with us in a perpetual 
levelling, but, on the contrary, in bringing about astonishing 
inequalities between individuals, who forcibly devour one 
another. The vital law of competition is at work there, as in 
nature, to such a point that, at times, this democracy gives 
the impression of an aristocracy, — I had almost said a feudal- 
ism. The president of a great railroad, the proprietor of a 
great newspaper, the master of a great factory at New York, 
at Chicago, at St. Paul, has more real power than a prince. 
Only, he is a prince who has made himself, and a similar 
conquest is within the reach of all, provided they have the 
strength. Equal social possibility, — such is the democratic 
formula in America. Equal social reality, — such is the 
formula in Europe, and particularly in France, since the 
Revolution of 1789. I know nothing so contradictory. 

There is a second difference which does not permit of an 
analogy between the democratic ideal United States and ours. 
The United States, even after allowing for the sociahstic demon- 
strations of German immigrants, appears to the traveller to be 
the least revolutionary of countries ; the one where constitu- 
tional problems are the most definitely and stringently regu- 
lated. It is a conservative democracy — that is to say, exactly 
the contrary of ours. This is because the country has instinc- 
tively put into practice the maxim which dominates the lives of 
nations, as it dominates those of individuals. Things maintain 
themselves by the same conditions which brought them into 
existence. In giving full play to his individual energy, the 

EE 



418 OUTRE-MER 

American has conformed to the law of his origin. Who made 
this country what it is? Exiles, rebels, adventurers. They 
came to this new land to recreate for themselves an existence 
of adventure, of daring, and of feats of will. A social compact, 
fixed enough to prevent those wills being turned into tools of 
disorder, broad and flexible enough to mutilate nothing of 
them — there, in an abstract form, is the programme which the 
doctors of social science would have given to this country, and 
which it has by instinct realized. They did not reach democ- 
racy through reasoning ; they found themselves established 
under that system. Thence results that sort of ease in liberty 
which is one of the striking features of America, and that 
absence of defensive laws. 

As a result of their origin, all the countries thus built up have 
that same profound unity, and, as a consequence, the same 
plasticity, whatever may be otherwise the nature of their gov- 
ernment. Aristocratic England is a proof of this. It is a 
lesson which we can take from the American democracy, but 
to practise it, it would be necessary for us to work in a direc- 
tion opposite to that in which the democratic party has been 
working for a hundred years. We should have to seek what 
remains of old France and attach ourselves again to it with 
every fibre, and first of all we should have to restore the prov- 
ince with its natural and hereditary unity, instead of the arti- 
ficial and parcelled-out " department " ; municipal autonomy 
instead of administrative centralization ; local and fecund univer- 
sities instead of our official and dead university ; then we should 
have to reconstitute the landed family by allowing complete lib- 
erty in the disposal of property by will ; we should have to pro- 
tect labor by the reconstitution of corporations ; we should have 
to restore to the religious life its vigor and dignity by the sup- 
pression of the budget of public worship and by giving religious 
associations the right to own property freely ; in a word, on 
this point, as on the other, the task before us would be the 



HOMEWARD 419 

systematic undoing of the murderous work of the French Revo- 
lution. This is the advice which, for the impartial observer, 
stands out from all the remarks made upon the United States. 
If their democracy is so vigorous and strong, it is because the 
individual is free and powerful in a State which is reduced to 
a minimum of action. If it unites all wills in an immense har- 
mony, it is because it is truly national. Our own revolution 
has so completely dried up the sources of French vitality, 
because it has established a rtJgime in which the State centralizes 
in itself all the vital forces of the country, and because it has 
violently cut asunder all historical links between our past and 
our present. This criticism is not new. The three most lucid 
analysts of contemporary France, — Balzac, Le Play, and Taine, 
— starting from very different premises, have nevertheless 
arrived at the same conclusions. It is not without interest to 
note that it is also the conclusion formed from a visit to the 
country which is most often used as an illustration by the parti- 
sans of that revolution. 

Thus I have learned to translate in America the word " de- 
mocracy " into realities quite contrary to those which it repre- 
sents in Europe, and consequently to fear it less. For if 
democracy is reconcilable with the most intense development 
of individuality and personality, all the objections launched 
against that form of civilization prove groundless at once. It 
is for us to lead it in that direction by every means in our 
power. I have learned there also to recognize the social bene- 
factions of science. It is a common idea among us, and one 
to which I have for my part adhered too often, that a principle 
of nihilism is concealed within it, which renders it incompatible 
with the higher needs of the heart of man. Even those who 
do not go so far as to condemn it thus in the name of the 
ideal, are inclined to believe that it is a bad educator of the 
people. They consider that many of the moral maladies of 
the present moment are caused by the intoxication which those 



420 OUTRE-MER 

results, imperfectly understood, produce in ill-prepared brains. 
The pages in which these objections have been formulated and 
commented upon during the last twenty years, and in which 
minds less competent than well intentioned have proclaimed 
the bankruptcy of that science which has excited, for forty 
years, such enthusiasm among its devotees, the Renans, the 
Taines, the Flauberts, would, if collected into volumes, fill a 
library. 

The enthusiastic hope of these great literary men in the 
future results of positive methods was not entirely justified. 
For the reaction of to-day the justification is not greater. 
A visit to the United States, where these methods have most 
constantly and most powerfully penetrated into the pettiest 
details of life, puts things back into their true place. We 
recognize, first of all, how incorrect are the statements of our 
moralists in regard to this general nihilism of science, since it 
exists yonder side by side with the most fervent Christianity — 
all New England is a proof of it — and neither does Christianity 
stand in the way of scientific development, nor does that de- 
velopment lessen the Christian faith. In an essay devoted to 
a celebrated article of M. Taine on " The Church in France," 
M. I'Abb^ de Broglie, one of the most enlightened apologists 
of the time, very justly remarked that the word " science " long 
signified with us two very distinct ideas, — on the one hand, a 
group of positive notions acquired by experimental procedure ; 
and on the other, the hypothesis of pure metaphysics con- 
structed upon those notions. In truth, the group of positive 
notions alone constitutes true science. The American mind, 
with its distributive lucidity, appears to have seen this from 
the beginning, since religious and scientific life have grown as 
though in parallel lines without stumbling against one another. 
Its schools and universities have thus shown, as an object lesson 
might do, the exactness of the theory put forward by Herbert 
Spencer at the opening of the First Principles in regard to the 



HOMEWARD 421 

possible reconciliation between religion and science through 
agnosticism. 

The first having for its object the unknown, that is to say, by 
definition, the domain of research which escapes the second, 
all that is necessary in order that these two powers, equally 
necessary to the human soul, should work side by side with- 
out touching one another, is not to allow the two empires to 
become intermingled. That agreement, which America has 
succeeded in, we, in our turn, can and must succeed in, and it 
is one of the duties to which her example invites the best of 
us. This land of initiative also points out to us that this same 
science, in spite of all the prejudices to which I made allusion 
just now, is an excellent educator of the lower classes. But it 
is on the condition that it shall be taken really as an educator 
— that is to say, that it shall appeal to the will through the 
intellect. The Americans have only obtained the vitality of 
their industrial civiHzation by submitting to this rule. All 
culture is duplicated in their schools with a corresponding 
activity ; all knowledge tends to practice ; and the most sci- 
entific of teachings, understood in this way, produced neither 
degraded people nor rebels. 

On one point, my visit to the United States has not modified 
my ideas ; I mean in regard to the opinion which I have con- 
ceived of the irreconcilable antagonism of races. I had left 
behind me a Europe all rent asunder, even in time of peace, 
by that antagonism. I have not found that the New World 
has escaped it to any greater degree. When we strive to guess 
the future of America, it is always, as with that of Europe, from 
the side of this problem of races that we end by looking at it. 
If one day a conflict between the West and the East should 
break out, — and so many signs seem, at times, to point to it, — 
the true principle will be there, in this influx of elements of the 
Germanic and Scandinavian race, so abundant that the civiliza- 
tion of An?lo-Saxon origin is no longer able to assimilate them. 



422 OUTRE-MER 

This is, however, but a hypothesis, and the majority of Ameri- 
cans refuse even to discuss it, so great is their confidence in 
the method adopted by their Repubhc for the settlement of 
these differences of race. 

That method is very simple, and in conformity with the deep 
respect of individuahsm upon which all their democracy is 
founded. It consists in multiplying indefinitely the centres of 
local activity, and consequently in continuously breaking up, 
by means of localized action, the forces which, massed in 
groups, would be too powerful. 

It is to be remarked, in fact, that the grave troubles from 
which America has suffered during these past years arise from 
the very centralized associations which have been built up con- 
trary to the tradition of individualism. True, Europe, bound 
as she is by historic necessities, cannot borrow this method 
and break the unity of the great countries of which she is 
composed. There is to be found, however, in this example, 
an indication of general policy. It is a return to the theory 
of little independent States — replaced, alas! by that of 
nationalities — which, systematically applied on the morrow 
of the First Empire, assured us so many years of such fruitful 
peace. The solution of the problem of races will be found in 
a recast geography, which, without hindering hereditary ten- 
dencies, parcels out the fields of activity. When the crisis 
of acute militarism, which the most brutal and the most 
clumsy of annexations forces upon us, is solved, either pacifi- 
cally or otherwise, that theory will impose itself upon those 
who will construct the new map of the Old World, and it will 
be a first step toward the United States of Europe, which was 
the dream of King Henry IV., and which remains the ideal 
of true civilization, reconcilable with all forms of government 
and all the interior traditions. 

Twenty-four hours have passed since I lingered over the 
details of some of the salutary teachings which the New World 



HOMEWARD 423 

can give the Old. I have said enough, in the course of my 
traveller's diary, of the defects which have shocked me in that 
New World, of its incoherence and its haste, of the crudity of 
the streets of its big towns, of the excesses of its fashionable\ 
life, and its lack of equilibrium, measure, and taste; of the \ 
too artificial tension of its culture, which gives to its women, \ 
as to its flowers, the artificiality of hothouse plants; of that I 
abuse of energy which results in a sort of ferocity in the / 
competition between business men, and which reduces the 
beaten — the lower classes — to a too cruel extremity of mis- 
fortune; of the corruption of its police, its magistrates, and 
its politicians, that indefinable something which excessive 
consciousness mixes with education; and finally, of the ab- 
sence of relaxation and abandonment in its pleasures. But 
what then? All the defects of this society are summed up in 
this, — that it has dispensed with time. The sudden trans- 
planting of the most energetic and the most unfortunate chil- 
dren of Europe to this new country has produced too rapid a 
movement. But why rake up these defects afresh ? The more 
I proceed, the more I understand the justice of the phrase of 
Goethe, "When we do not speak of things with a partiality 
full of love, what we say is not worth being repeated," and, 
at the moment when I am setting my foot on European soil, 
it is truly with an emotion of gratitude that I say adieu to 
America — of gratitude, because I have received precious, in- 
comparable teachings; of gratitude, because I feel that France 
is loved there; of gratitude, finally, becaues it exists, and its 
niere existence represents for the future of civilization an 
immense possibility. 

In this last night, and within a few hours of Liverpool, all 
the ideas gathered in those long months of exile come back 
and stir me again most deeply. Toward five o'clock, a soft, 
vague V/ipor having risen, all the outlines of the coast began 
to melt and sink away. I saw but the water, dead and green. 



424 OUTRE-MER 

green with a greenness as of emerald and milk. A gentle 
shivering ripple ran over the water as the steamer advanced. 
Low in the sky was a large, broad band of mauve, and in that 
mauve was the birth of a rainbow, the base formed on a point 
of light cast — toward where? The sun, which was setting 
yonder, threw its rays on the level of the water and struck 
straight upon a light-ship painted red, which seemed aflame. 
A sailing vessel was approaching, which took such dark — 
nay, quite black — shades, that it seemed a mourning boat, 
as it glided onward, with a motion tenderly and peacefully 
funereal. It was a dream landscape, such as we meet in this 
fairy-like climate, a landscape in which one might expect to 
see the feet of the Saviour, of the celestial Friend, walking 
toward us, toward the humble men whose hearts the beauty of 
such evenings at once pierces and overwhelms, I turned to 
the other side, and I saw the sun about to die. It was red, 
like flowing blood, hemmed in with black — the black of night, 
the night which pressed upon it, and engulfed without being 
lightened by it. 

A bar extended across it. Then it diminished until it ceased 
to be, in that darkness of the sky in which there brooded over 
a red-brown sea nothing but a purple point which flickered 
out. Then there remained nothing but the clouds, just as we 
imagine sometimes, in these days of threatening wars and revo- 
lutions, that other clouds, those of a new barbarism, are about 
to veil the little point of light which is civilization. And here 
I began to consider over again, in thought, the course which 
the steamer had just travelled across the ocean. I said to my- 
self that back yonder, at this same hour, that sun was at the 
summit of the sky, half way in its course, lighting the towns, 
the country, an entire universe. The harbor of New York 
appeared to me in its enormous activity, then the avenues and 
the crowds of passers-by. I saw again in a flash Boston, Phila- 
delphia, Baltimore, Chicago, St. Paul. Minneapolis, so many 



HOMEWARD 425 

cities in which I scarcely stopped, yet in which I sojourned 
long enough for their names to conjure up vivid pictures ; and 
the consciousness that that other world exists beside ours, that 
humanity has yonder so colossal a field of experiment in which 
to continue its work, fills me with a sort of mysterious exalta- 
tion, as though an act of faith in human will had declared itself 
in me, almost in spite of myself, and I opened my heart quite 
fully to this great breath of courage and hope that has come 
to me from "outre-mer." 



Wortoaotr ^rrsB : 

J, S. Gushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



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